You say you'd like a piece of art or handicraft to take home as a souvenir of Paris? Buying a painting by a young Salon artist isn't a bad idea, but what about looking for something absolutely ancient at the flea market? Outside the city walls of Paris, there's a bunch of junkyard shops around Clignancourt. There is surely a whiff of dubious air, but there is the chance you might come across a genuine treasure here. An antique means it has to be at least a hundred years old, yup, a century old. In French, junk is called "brocante." Persian pottery, carpets that don't fly, hand-woven fabric from India, clocks that hardly tick, ready-made dentures, silverware not unlike what Jean Baljean licked from church, etc. anything goes and so do the lucky finds. Say, I wonder what happened to the chap who celebrated his bargain getting the childhood skull of Napoleon?