Plants for all! There is always something fun to do on the weekends in Paris. This weekend we went to a pop-up plant sale.

The sale is run by Plants Pour Tous (Plants for all). This is an organization that sells plants at affordable prices in 11 of the major French cities as well as Brussels. The sales seem to run about 2-3 times per month on the weekends in Paris and less frequently in the other cities. They also seem to have a regular store in Paris which we haven’t visited so I don’t quite know what that’s about.

People standing in line to get into the plant sale

There were a lot of happy people buying plants. And we bought some as well! In addition to coming home with plants, when we went to the plant sale we happened onto Alain Ducasse’s chocolat manufacturing site, a great place to eat, Cafe des Anges and got to experience a bit of another arrondissement, the 11th.

Why am I writing about the plant sale? You may wonder since it isn’t something a visitor/tourist to Paris will be interested in especially since a) it is infrequent and b) they aren’t going to want to take plants home with them.

My reasons for writing is that if you are a tourist in Paris, I urge you to explore outside the traditional tourist sites. Once you’ve done the major tourist sites, perhaps take a day or half a day and explore.

A way to do provide some focus to the exploration, is to find something that interests you in an arrondissement or area that you haven’t been to before. I assure you that Paris will always deliver something of interest.

For some tips on where to find stuff of interest and what’s happening I have some suggestions. To start with here are two sites which list current events. The first, Sortiraparis is comprehensive but very ad heavy, and the second, the official website of the Paris tourist office is ad free but only has the most major events. Both sites are available in English. Other ideas are check out one of the Paris swimming pools (we have a few posts on them) or a brocant or vide grenier sale (the equivalent of garage sales).

Take a chance and explore!