EW Brocante - 21, rue Saint-Paul 75004

 Ever walk into a shop

 And say to yourself

 'I'm home'.

 That's how I felt when I wandered into EW because a certain well-known shop down the street was closed comme d'habitude. And boy was I glad.

EW - 21, rue St-Paul 'Le Marais' 75004

 EW (Eduardo) on the phone talking away in Portuguese, looked up and said 'Bonjour'.  I responded, 'Tudo bom?'

He smiled and let me wander and poke around to my heart's content.

 Eduardo came to Paris 20 years ago to study architecture from Brazil. He opened his tiny closet-sized shop 12 years ago.

 He told me,

'Whenever I get fed up with Paris, I just look out the window and I'm happy again'.

 I was enthralled with the old French school goodies Eduardo has just like at Le Bonbon au Palais - several adorable watercolor boxes called out to me.

 The vintage French china was hard to ignore.

 But this old French how-to-draw brochure had my name on it.

 Irresistible.

 Doesn't it remind you of Anna Corba's Doodling in French?

 If you walk into a Parisian patisserie and don't know how to say,

'Please wrap my macarons as a cadeau/gift'

Now you can draw it for the vendeuse.

 Anna shows you how to draw a pitcher too. In a restaurant you can 'ask' for a carafe d'eau/Paris tap by simply sketching it on a napkin, instead of spending $$ for a bottle of water.

 It's a perfect gift for the French-obsessed. Well I'm off to New York today. Do stop in at EW when you're wandering in Le Marais for an enchanting return to childhood.