Americana and Castles

Another packed weekend in Paris! After classes Thursday Abbey, Brad and I headed out in search of an American grocery store called “Thanksgiving” that I’d heard about. I’m cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my host mom, a couple of her friends and Abbey the Sunday after Thanksgiving so I wanted to see what type of ingredients this store had incase I couldn’t find something in the French grocery stores. The store was very small, but incredible! I didn’t realize how nice it is to have familiar brands and labels looking back at you on the grocery store shelves… there was Kraft mac and cheese, Fluff, and three different brands of peanut butter. They also had all the basics you need for Thanksgiving: stove top stuffing, ocean spray cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie spices and even pans for your turkey and basters! I loved just standing at the window looking in. I decided not to purchase anything unless a substitute really couldn’t be found in a French grocery store since the prices were kind of outrageous (4.80 euro for a can of cranberry sauce!). Since we were already in the area, I wanted to head over to the falafel place and get an early dinner since it was one of the nights my host mom doesn’t cook for me. On our way, we walked by a Boulangerie/ Patisserie (bread and pastries store), which Abbey said had the best pastries so we were, of course, obligated to go in and make a purchase. I decided to buy a beignet (French for doughnut) since I had yet to try one here and remembered my days of making beignets with my grandma when I was younger. Here they are round like American doughnuts, but without a whole in the center. I ordered one and the lady turned to me and was like “chocolat?” – I had no idea that there was anything in them, but I decided what the heck and said sure. It was THE MOST DELICIOUS THING EVER! I was practically dying outside the store as I took my first bite. I made Abbey take a taste and she definitely felt the same way, it was heaven. So I quite contentedly ate my doughnut, which had been sliced in half and had a layer of chocolate in the middle, as we walked over to the falafel place. Falafel was delicious as always and we did some window-shopping as we ate before heading back to the metro to go home.

Friday, I got up early because I was taking my first field trip with IES and had to meet the bus at 8:30am. We were supposed to go to Fontainebleau and Vaux-le-Victomte, but Vaux-le-Vicomte was already closed for the winter or something like that so we ended up going to Fontainebleau and an artisan village called Barbizon, which was an area where painters of impressionism and realism gathered and painted in the forest back in the day. It was a really cloudy and foggy day and as we left the city I turned around to look back and couldn’t tell for the life of me that we’d just left Paris. It took us about an hour to get to Fontainebleau where it was equally cloudy and cold. We split up into two groups and my group got this really nice tour guide lady who gave us a tour (in French) and stopped often to make sure we were understanding what she was saying or to make a joke about something she said. Many of the kings and both emperors of France used the castle when they had the itch to go hunting. It was originally built for François I, but all of the kings after that made additions and/or changes within the castle. Pope Pius VII was also kidnapped and kept there for like a year and a half after he had come to Paris for Napoleon’s coronation (by kidnapped they meant that he wasn’t allowed to leave the grounds, he could however walk around the gardens, receive visitors, and his living space – including multiple receiving rooms and a large bedroom – was probably as big as my house!).

After Fontainebleau we went to lunch at a nearby restaurant. The dessert was très tasty! We had profiteroles, which are puff pastries cut in half with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle and then homemade chocolate sauce on top, delicious! (and pretty too) Feeling sufficiently full and tired, we got back on the bus and drove the 20 or so minutes to Barbizon. There we took a tour of an old inn that used to house artists. They had painted all over everything there, the walls, the furniture and apparently even the dog! It was cool to get so see what was left of their wall and furniture paintings and upstairs they had a mini display of some of their canvas works as well. After that we walked down the main street for a while and our tour guide pointed out some of the more notable artists’ residences. After that it was back on the bus and back to Paris… it was nice to be back – the countryside felt too quiet.

Yesterday (Saturday), Abbey and I decided to do two of the walking tours out of my guidebook. We started off with the Ile St. Louis tour that took us by pretty bridges and parks, a large house now owned by the Rothschild family, many cute little boutiques and Berthillon ice cream (again). We stopped in Berthillon (the actually parlor and not another restaurant selling Berthillon) since Abbey had yet to try it, she got tiramisu and I tried some sort of semi-dried plum and liqueur ice cream and raspberry rose. The plum was good and the raspberry rose was out of this world!!! It was such an interesting combination of raspberry and rose flavors, but they were simply amazing together and made a very pretty red color. After Ile St. Louis we walked over to the Bastille area to do the second walking tour. We started at the Canal St. Martin (where I tried roasted chestnuts for the first time – interesting, but not sure I’d get them again), headed up to the Bastille, walked around the “Place” a little and then took some side streets down and around (they had an interesting assortment of restaurants and cute boutiques – definitely want to go back). We finished off by walking along this raised walkway (about 2 stories up) that was lined with tree and other plants. It was really cool and I would have never known it was there. It used to be railroad tracks, but now they converted it into this path that takes you from close to the Bastille all the way to the Bois du Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris. We didn’t follow it all the way because by this time we were both feeling the effects of walking for 3 hours straight and figured it was time to head home.

Today was a relaxing day… I took my time getting ready this morning and then headed out in time to meet up with my friends for lunch. Originally, we wanted to go to some place Shaina knows about that serves bagels, but apparently it’s closed on Sundays so we went to a restaurant called “Breakfast in America.” Our hostess was of Asian descent and spoke with an Australian accent, something I found rather amusing given she was working at a place trying to imitate the U.S. in Paris. The food was delicious and I think everyone had a great time. We spent an hour waiting in line to get into the restaurant and most of that time was passed by discussing every item on the menu and how much we liked/ missed/ wanted that particular food or commenting on how they explained certain item in French (ex. Cream cheese was described as cheese Philadelphia style and salsa as Mexican sauce). I got a bagel and cream cheese and a pancake on the side. It was a rather carb heavy lunch, but quite enjoyable and made us all feel back at home. After we all cleaned our plates thoroughly and paid the bill we headed our separate ways as everyone else had homework they needed to do. I was actually good this weekend and got my homework done ahead of time!!

Fontainebleau pictures here.

Walking tour pictures here.