Les profiteroles did not stand a chance.
So this past Saturday my friend Laura and I decided to take a day trip to Nantes which is only a 30 minute TGV trip. It was actually sunny (for once) and decently warm so we picked the perfect day and getting to Nantes is ridiculously easy…We mostly just wandered and explored their chateau and the downtown area. There’s this really cool shopping center called “Le Passage Pommeraye” which is sort of just a city block and there’s an open tunnel that cuts through the middle of it with all of these little boutiques. It’s kind of hard to explain, but hopefully you get it. Anyway that was really interesting. Nantes actually felt really big and busy compared to Angers. The more I live here the more I love Angers. It has this amazing calm and sweetness to it that you wouldn’t expect from a downtown area. Nantes was definitely more cosmopolitan and busy and so we decided to get tea at this place I’d heard about called “La Cigale” which is Nantes most famous restaurant. It was absolutely stunning inside, my pictures definitely don’t do it justice because I felt like an idiot photographing a restaurant. Anyway, we got a table and wanted only tea but I guess we didn’t time it right so they gave us the lunch menu and we were like “shit…” and when we asked about it the guy just brought us some tea and was like “so, what would you like for lunch?” oops…anyway we decided just to go for it and got a glorious 60 euro lunch of French bread, these cold crab raviolis with a light balsamic dressing and I tried my first beef carpaccio (just cause I had to try it sometime) and it was actually delicious. It had arugula pesto and fresh parmesean all over it and then greens on top. Yummm. Laura and I nearly cried when she got her dessert. There are these things called profiteroles which are similar to small ice cream sandwiches but ice cream between two fresh French pastries and they pour molten chocolate over them at your table. Ahhhh killme, they were sooo good. We were just laughing the whole time eating them because they were so heavenly. But yeah after 2 hours of stuffing our faces and spending most of our money we decided to head home and both passed out in food comas on the train.
I recently bought nutella which was both a blessing and a curse. It takes all of my self-restraint not to just sit in my room and eat it from the jar with my fingers.
This is the first real week of all of my classes which is rather tedious though I suppose I can’t complain because Wednesday is my Thursday and I only have one class tomorrow…But I was thoroughly disappointed with my “Francais pour etrangers” courses, which are supposed to be teaching me French. They were horribly unstructured and didn’t seem to require us to do anything. Sleeping seemed to be a perfectly adequate way to participate. (Don’t worry Mom, I wasn’t the one sleeping…) I’m forced to be very organized and keep track of all of my notes and paperwork for each class so that I may (in theory) get some UVM credit when all of this is over. Needless-to-say this is a heinous struggle for me. So, to counteract the gross order of my paperwork, I have clothing and jewelry and shoes strewn about my room in utter chaos. So there.
I recently learned that some of the French kids I met had read this blog…Embarrassing. But anyway—shout out to Leo and Thomas—I hope I mildly entertain you though my sense of humour is more idiotic than it is intelligent.
I will try and post again this weekend because I think I need to make some virtual record of thoroughly mundane parts of my life like Super U and the patisseries and boulangeries, etc. I was recently talking to my dad and lost it a lil bit about how much pressure I felt to have the MOST fun and learn the MOST French and lead a thoroughly fabulous life when sometimes I really just wanted to nap, and he told me that some of his favourite memories of living in France were just the small things—the everyday things—that you barely consider when you live there and then find yourself missing when you leave. So for the next couple days I’m going on a life-appreciation binge and will try to photograph all my favourite little mundane things so that I may never forget them. I’ll let you know what I find…
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