When my friend Betsi emailed me in January to invite me to her house in Burgundy for a weekend of brocanting (that’s a verb, right?) with the girls, I couldn’t get out my Sharpie fast enough to write it on my calendar. Burgundy + brocantes always equals fun in my book, so I packed my bags, hit the ATM (I actually think I heard it wimper when I punched in my code), and I was soon buzzing down the A6 in a van packed with four other women, all obsessive junkers like me, and a pan of just-baked brownies in the back.

Sometimes I take on the most dangerous of assignments. Like when my editor at Virtuoso Life magazine asked me to go to Brussels and write about the boutiques in the chic Antoine Dansaert-Ste. Catherine neighborhood, and I unknowingly timed it to coincide with the end of the January sales.

See that blue stuff streaked with a wisp of white? That, Paris people, is what the sky looks like.