GourmandeMom™

Austin Psych Fest On The Road To Its Sister City of Angers (France): GourmandeMom's Visitor's Guide to Angers (Part 1)

Austin's Psych Fest has had its sights on Angers, France for some time - and now, Psych Fest will officially go global with Angers' independent music venue, Le Chabada, doing a French twist on Psych Fest as "Levitation."  The festival is September 20-21, 2013.  

It also just so happens that Austin and Angers are “sister cities” since 2011.  

If you're heading to Angers for Levitation, and you've never been to France before, some basic tips to streamline that adventure follow.  Those tips include practical advice on purchasing train tickets in the web-based world we live in.  The train tips are included, in Part 3, because you'll most likely be taking a train from Paris to get to Angers.  If you've never been to Angers, some of my current favorite things are described in Part 2, along with more general information about dining out, including wine and beer ordering, and some of my favorite places to eat in Angers. 

But before heading to France to get your reverb vibe on, with such stellar groups as the Black Angels, at Levitation over at Le Chabada, some sister city vocabulary is in order, including how to pronounce "Angers":  The r is silent; the s is silent; the g is soft (like "awn-zhay") (disclaimer: this is just a close approximation).

ville jumelle  - “sister city” ; but literally, “twin city”

un jumelage - the “sistering” or more a propos in French, a “twinning” of the two cities

 l’Anjou – the name recounting the historical origins for this former province, ruled by powerful counts in the Middle Ages, then annexed to the French crown in the 1480s.

les Angevins – like we are called Austinites, the folks that inhabit this beautiful region of vineyards, rivers, and châteaux are “angevins”

l’ardoise – Angers is one of the principal regions in France for this dark blue-gray rock mines for centuries in the area: Anger’s distinctive tiled roofs are of this material, inspiring a local delicacy, the highly addictive Quernons d’Ardoise, a nougatine covered in blue-tinged chocolate—a not-to-miss crunchy sweet sensation.

le Chabada – music and concert venue for independent music scene in Angers: the major partner and dominating force behind Austin Angers Music and Angers’ SxSW presence.

Why Austin and Angers?  It's a good match.  The capital of Texas and this town in the heart of the Loire Valley have much in common.  

• A keen interest in sustainability: Angers is the European Capital of sustainable development

• A large student population: Angers has 33,000 students — in a city of 283,000 — at 2 large universities on 4 campuses; and it has a very young population: 48% of the population is under 30.

• A rich cultural life full of museums and music, art, and film festivals: Angers hosts an international European film festival in January - les Premiers Plans; a music festival “Tempo Rives" (in its 50th year) in the summer – with free concerts along the Maine river;  a magical Christmas festival, “Soleils d’Hiver,” November 29 to December 29 this year (artisanal regional crafts, Christmas trees, carousels, hot mulled wine); and perhaps the most festive community-building festival of all — les Accroche-Coeurs, a huge city-wide cultural arts festival where les angevins participate in plays, theatre of all kinds throughout the city — ranging from serious to silly — a festival attracting 100,000 visitors each year. 

• An emphasis on outdoor living: Angers has 350 kilometers of backpacking and hiking trails; bike trails start in the heart of the city and then run along the Loire into nearby vineyards.

• Recognition for a unique quality of life: Angers took the number one spot as best quality of life for large cities (between 200,000 and 300,000) in France 2012 and was featured on the front cover of L’Express, a news journal, in a special May 2012 edition.  (Angers has an ambitious multi-year master plan to bring nature right up close into the city by removing the traffic lanes from along the scenic Maine river to create parks, islands, public art spaces and installations.)

• A river runs through them: Angers has the Maine, which turns into the Loire; Austin has the Colorado, also known as Lady Bird Lake and formerly known as Town Lake.

• Well-known local libations: Angers is the home of Cointreau (margarita ingredient!); Austin has its home-grown adult libations, such as Tito’s, Deep Eddy Vodka, Dripping Springs vodka.

But like all relationships, the differences keep things interesting….

• Angers has a 13th-century medieval château right in the middle of town.

• Angers is located in the Loire Valley—a UNESCO World Heritage Site (along with other such sites as the Great Wall of China and the Statue of Liberty)—which boasts some 21 châteaux.

• Angers has high speed rail: thanks to the TGV, Angers is a short 90-minute comfy train ride to Paris.

• And, well, les Angevins speak French. 

First time to France?

The stereotypes about France are not going to hold up well when you get to Angers.  If you have been to Paris and had a bad experience, or even a good experience, know that getting out of Paris and into French country side of rolling green hills, rivers, and vineyards will show you what all of the rest of France knows is true and repeats often: "Paris is not France."   So take everything you’ve heard or thought about “the French” and throw all (ok, just some) of that out the window for getting to know Austin’s “ville jumelle,” Angers.

When I do boot camp-type classes for people going to France (mostly to Paris), a few of these tips on customs and rituals have proven to be helpful.  Knowing a few customs should go a long way toward making your visit a good one.  (And remember, the "first floor" in France is what we know in the US as the "second floor."  The ground floor of any building in France is not the "first floor."  The first floor has a special word: rez-de-chausée.) 

Politeness

Yes, the French are very polite.  Greetings of “Bonjour Madame/Monsieur”; “Au revoir Madame/Monsieur” are critical to your being culturally fluent and making any experience anywhere in France much more enjoyable.   These greetings are customary when entering a restaurant, and even when entering a retail establishment of any kind – be it for clothes, bread (at la boulangerie), or pastries (at la patisserie).  It does not have to be a big production. It’s just about acknowledging the person. It's just the way it is there.

Patientez-vous

Relationships are very important in France—in business but also just the everyday tasks of daily life. Be prepared to just patientez-vous (patient yourself/be patient) when the woman or man in front of you in line for your pain au chocolat for that morning, or a baguette for a picnic, is carrying on a nice little conversation with the person behind the counter.  These types of relationships are critical to an individual’s quality of life.  So let those conversations unfold and take their time.  Patientez-vous and wait your turn. 

More Politeness Issues (Eating out)

Dining out is a very different experience in France.  We will leave out for the moment the distinctions between what in French culture is a "restaurant" (generally more formal, structured dining ritual with more "rules) and a café (less structure, informal, quicker dining experience). 

For the American visitor, the difference in the French attitude about the eating out experience can be shocking, and easily misinterpreted for bad, rude, or terrible service.  Sure, any restaurant or café at any time may provide a bad service experience, in Austin or in Angers. But the experience that is the ordinary and typical ritual of dining out in France should not be interpreted as “rude” and “inattentive” just because it’s (very) different from the US.

L’addition, s’il vous plaît…

Do not expect a server to check on you, much less keep checking on you, for whether everything is ok with your meal or your experience.  This is considered patronizing in a gastronomic, self-help culture such as France, and just plain silly. The philosophy here — and a major cultural difference — is that your experience of enjoying the company of friends, or your solitude, should not be interrupted for a gratuitous inquiry as to your well-being.  If you want something that has not otherwise been provided to you (which is typically already done), just ask for it. (And, no, it's not the 1950s or 60s: no one calls a "server/waiter" garçon anymore...it's "Monsieur" (or "Madame") for your server).    Otherwise, you can rest assured you will be enjoying your meal, coffee, or apéro, pretty much uninterrupted.

• What this means:  You will need to ask for the check (“l’addition”) when you are ready for it. It will not be handed to you, unless you are perhaps at a café and just ordering a coffee or apéritif and the café is busy.

More details on meal times and libations to follow in Part 2.  

Just remember:  If you really want to profiter (benefit) from your stay, get to know the terroir: Drink Local (wines)!

 

 

Prepping for Austin Week 2016 in Angers, France: le sandwich, le pizza, et les toilettes

Map image available here at Lonely Planet. 

A sandwich (or a pizza) is a good low-budget option for lunch while in France, but just get ready for some differences.  Here's a general set of guidelines to help in ordering these easy-on-the-budget food items.

The Classic:  Jambon beurre:  As plain and simple as it sounds. Straight up ham and butter. Yes, butter.  It is fabulous.  Do not even think about saying hey, may I have mayonnaise and mustard instead of butter?  Pretty soon you will be wanting luscious French butter on all your sandwiches back home. When the ingredients are fresh, you don't need much for a great sandwich.  What you really should be more concerned about here is the bread.  Not all bread is created equal in France. But that is a post for another day.   

The Other Classic.  Jambon fromage:  Ham and cheese.  The cheese will be gruyère.  Remove "Cheddar," "Colby," and "Monterrey Jack" from your vocabulary and from your mind when in France.  Given you are in the land of 246+ cheeses, as General Charles de Gaulle famously remarked, you should not be missing those Austin standards.   You may have a strong yearning for nachos and queso by the time you get home, but enjoy for now the bounty of France's triple cream goodness while you can.

Crudités:  You may see a sandwich described as having crudités: that's what we would call the add-ons of lettuce and tomato.  They will be in small quantities. Remember this is the land of moderation, not the land of the Big Gulp.   

Thon.  My favorite.  It's a tuna (thon) sandwich. And I've seen it only with slices of hard-boiled egg (oeuf) on it.  The best one I ever had in Angers was in a very tiny bakery off a little side street that leads into the Place Louis Imbach (see map above).

Poulet et Crudités.  Chicken with lettuce and tomato.  This one I see frequently. I have never had it. The chicken has just never appealed to me.  

Camembert.  A dreamy sandwich.  Slices of Camembert, on the butter-slathered bread, as your lunch. This is the real Camembert straight from Normandie with raw milk, the stuff you cannot get in the U.S. If you have never liked Camembert in the U.S., give it a try in France.  

Here's a post I like about a couple of cafés I have enjoyed in Paris.  The post also includes a nice description of sandwich options and photos.

As briefly mentioned in the previous Austin Week post, there are a couple of go-to places I rely on for sandwiches.  There is that little place off the Place du Ralliement, where in fact there is a far more exotic array of sandwiches than the basics mentioned above (see photo below).  They have a lot of options with salmon (saumon), avocado (avocat), as well as a poulet with mayonnaise. All of these combinations are assembled on metal trays, just waiting for you to decide on your choice of bread so they can slide the assembled ingredients onto said bread. 

La formule.  This is not a sandwich.  This is an important vocabulary word when ordering a sandwich. There will be signs explaining the package deals (Ia formule): sandwich/boisson (drink) or sandwich/dessert.  The latter is self-explanatory:  Apple tart (tarte aux pommes) and apricot tart (tarte aux abricots) are standards for the dessert choice. The slices are huge for a country so inclined to moderation in food portions.

Some desserts may require paying a little extra (un supplément) if you want them with the formule.  A slice of that yummy "choc'o roi" cake for example, created and made right there in Angers by Maison Bécam, probably requires un supplément.  

The beautiful packaging for the Choc'o Roi.

Sometimes chips are available as part of the formule.

You may also see, such as at train stations, a formule for your breakfast: there is the formule for un café and your choice of viennoisserie, or pastry, such as a croissant, a pain au chocolat, or maybe even a pain aux raisins.  And if you see beignets at the café in the train station (la gare) in Angers, order them. I love those things: cinnamon-sprinkled fried dough is one of the three little beignets you will get. The others are filled.  I wish all three were just the cinnamon and chocolate ones.   

Le pizza

An egg on the pizza is frequent. Don't say "ugh" just yet.  The pizza generally is super crispy and very thin and not the amount of cheese you are used to seeing in pizza commercials on TV in the U.S. Ham is a frequent topping, but there are plenty of other options that will sound familiar, such as a Marguerite. My usual order when I get a pizza is ham, cheese, and mushrooms (les champignons). Although there is no pepperoni pizza, enjoy the fact that a goat cheese and rich heavy cream pizza is a possibility (I had one of those in Paris, once or twice).  

There is an extra special something that comes with pizza in France, however: a bottle of spicy olive oil. There is typically no Parmesan cheese to sprinkle on the pizza, but yes there is this spicy olive oil.  Drizzle it all over that pizza once you are ok with the spiciness. Then take the crusty ends of that pizza that you left for the end of the meal and run them through the olive oil left there on the tray to get every last drop of it. You will miss this when you are not in France.  

Les toilettes

To the English speaker it may sound funny to say out loud what sounds like "where are the toilets."   Get used to it.  That's what you need to ask for when you are looking for the restrooms.  Don't be saying "salle de bain," which is what you might (wrongly) consider the right way to ask for the bathroom/restroom in France.  They will think you want to settle in for a long soapy bath.  Just ask where are les toilettes:   "S'il vous plait, où sont les toilettes?"  

There are telltale signs around a café or restaurant to find les toilettes, just as you can intuit this in an American establishment. If you see a tiny set of stairs heading downstairs, les toilettes may be down there.  If you see a set of stairs heading upstairs, that also could be where les toilettes are. Or they may just be towards the back of the café or restaurant. Look for signage. Gender neutral has been very common in France for some time.  If there are male and female toilettes, there is probably a common sink that is situated outside the two little rooms that comprise les toilettes.

By all means take advantage of a nice toilettes stop if you are at a musuem, such as the Musée des Beaux Arts (see map above), or the Château d'Angers, or the Musée Jean Lurçat and the adjoining Museum of Contemporary Tapestry. (They are on the other side of the Maine river. If you have time, take a little walk over there. It is a super charming part of Angers.)  

The tapestry at the Musée Jean Lurcat.

You really should not just walk into a café and use the facilities though.   At least stand at the counter (where prices are always less than those for service on the sunny outside terrace) and have a quick café as an excuse to use the facilities. 

Not sitting at the counter for coffee. This day in May 2016 in Angers was just too pretty to be inside.

The public toilettes below ground level on the Place du Ralliement are perfectly fine though. And believe it or not, train station bathrooms are pretty fantastic.  Even in Paris. Just get your change ready. You must pay the attendant (or a machine) the required entry fee for the privilege of using those facilities, including at the train station (la gare) in Angers.  This is one reason why I advocate traveling with some cash (euros).  I saw a bathroom attendant in Cannes this past May shut down the whole facility and lock the entry doors because he thought one man did not pay the fee.  Have some change on you.

Safe travels!  

And don't forget to follow Austin Angers Creative on Facebook for more Austin Week updates.

 

Reboot: All because of Angers, France and Austin Week

Fried shrimp.  Part of the Louisiana food orgy. More about that in the next installment.

I'm back! Full of energy and looking radiant (so someone told me this morning) no doubt because of this 6th cleanse.  This one was made necessary because of one humdinger of a Louisiana food and beverage, emphasis on beverage, blow-out in late June.

Sure there are many subjects to ponder after such a long absence from the blog, such as the food issues I still face and find annoying and fascinating at the same time. Those include portion control, snacking mindlessly during Bones at my lunch break, and nervous-eating/drinking in large crowds--even in crowds of people I know and love.  Some other time perhaps.  Today this reboot edition is all about going back to the basics: Austin and France.  

You may recall a lot of my writings earlier about France, Paris, and food and Paris, and especially our lovely sister city Angers, which I began exploring back in 2012.  

Morning run in Angers, heading up to the steps of St. Maurice Cathedral.  May 2016

Now others have discovered Angers and love it as much as I do, and the Austin-Angers connections, collaborations and initiatives are about to bust wide open thanks to the Austin team of Austin Angers Creative and its counterpart in Angers. 

"Austin Week" in Angers is the brainchild of Germain Kpakou, a brilliant cultural events dreamer and planner in Angers.  The timing is so very right to revisit this blog as this second edition of Austin Week, September 12-18, is set to be even more ambitious than last year (thanks to Germain and his Austin co-conspirator Samantha Phelps), and it is thanks to this blog that I met mastermind Germain in the first place.

Once Germain found me, we started a conversation about gastronomy, natural wine production, and Angers and Austin.  And thanks to him and his creative cohorts in Angers, I discovered the best of Angers and made great friends very quickly.  

A short one year after its successful first edition, Austin Week this year includes chefs from Austin attending en masse and pop-up meals all over and in Angers' best and funkiest restaurants.  This is thanks in large part to Germain's gastronomic collaborator and partner in cultural entrepreneurship, Chef Rémi Fournier, owner of a growing number of restaurants in Angers, including Chez Rémi and Saignant. 

But Austin Week is not just about food.  Graffiti artists from Austin are going over, as well as sculptors, France-focused business lawyers (yours truly), beverage distributors, realtors, journalists, musicians galore, and a DJ from a certain beloved Austin radio station. And of course yoga instructors and tattoo artists.  

Not Angers, but it has an Angers connection.  This was the Cannes Film Festival in May.  I got to attend thanks to already being in the south of France, and thanks to an Angers friend giving a presentation about his Austin-Angers collaborations in film with Premiers Plans/Austin Film Society.  Brother-in-law Tim Grierson was there too, reviewing films and thus on duty all the time.  We managed a quick dinner at 10pm after one of his many screenings.  

Though I will be focused this Austin Week on my presentations for the technology side of the Austin-Angers connections, on IoT and U.S. market entry for French companies, you can bet I will be hitting as many of those Austin-Angers chef-related food events as they allow me.

All are welcome to make the trek to Angers for Austin Week.  The more the merrier. Check out some of my earlier blogs about Angers to start getting excited about this little gem in the Loire Valley.  Lovely Angers is a short 1.5 hour TGV ride from Paris and so very easy to navigate. Check out the Austin Angers Creative pages on the Facebook to get the very latest intel about the Austin Week programming.  

Hope to see you in Angers!

 

 

West Austin Studio Tours (2015)

It was just as well that two very good friends could not make it for all of the big soirée that was my 50th birthday celebration: that meant two additional birthday weekends with each of those friends.  

At about 3am Sunday morning, I ended the last of those celebrations.  What better way to close that out than with the friend who has hung in there with me for decades and even drove to Houston for that 30th birthday, and of course was here in Austin for the emotionally tense and strained 40th birthday (who knew divorce was in my future for that coming year!). 

Of course we would map out a day that included the West Austin Studio Tour.  Not until our last stop did we really hit the jackpot: Empty House Productions on Jessie Street.

 But what does any of this have to do with food, you may ask.

 

A good question.

 Not much of a connection.  But there is a connection. 

Tenuous, but a connection. 

It is coming soon, that connection.

This installation design by Belén García-Mendoza inspired me to re-arrange all my shelves back at home.   I have not done that yet.  It just inspired me to do that, someday.  

(Belen's little girls were handing out her beautifully graphically designed flyers.  She does hand-painted fabrics, painted tableware, murals. She has branded this all as Miss Pepita Creative Studio.  And all only in the 2 years after moving here from Spain.  Fabulous talent.) 

 

Soon after the moment the gal who is the dynamo behind Sudaderie and those embroidery works in crazy different shapes and designs opened her mouth we figured out what the deal was here.  

Just about all these women who did this work that we were gazing at so lovingly were all Spanish.  Straight from Madrid.  

Ah. That explains the paella pan.

A clean paella pan was on top of the stove.  There was a stove because in what looks at first to be a regular house on arrival is in fact a house with no furniture because each room is exhibition space.  

There is also an immense backyard, perfect for parties, as it so obviously had been earlier in the afternoon before we arrived.  We could see a paella pan on the big table outdoors, with not a bite left from the earlier gathering.

Finally they figure out about Melissa's growing up in Spain. I say finally because Melissa does not lead with this at all.  Once she did get going with the Spanish, they took her for a madrileña.  

After we ask about the installation piece (pictured a few pictures above) in the shower, with the stones all painted with black ink with swimmers, each one very different from the others, representing women swimming through life and life issues, we meet the artist, Carolina Alcocer, in person.  More beautiful Spanish (Melissa, not I of course).

There follows an invitation to join them for paella the next day, outside in the yard under the pergolas and the trees.  

Lovely. 

(Already sold, this piece.  This and other works in this style all by the very young (to me) and very tiny Heather Sundquist.)

The paella gathering was not to be, however.  

Turns out one can play hooky from the workload and side jobs for only one very full day per weekend.  Work beckoned, so no paella.  

And that's the food connection.  

 

 

 

Vespaio Rediscovered (May 2015)

Through some happy coincidences I've become acquainted with the French side of the fun yet food-serious team at Vespaio. And by that I mean Claude, one of the owners, who is French.  At a celebration dinner Friday night at Vespaio, with a friend who is a good friend of Claude, I reminisced about how much Austin has changed since I first visited Vespaio in the early 2000s.  I've been doing a lot of that--reminiscing--in these 2 weeks of getting used to being 50.

Sure, the Enoteca next door was always a favorite.  But Vespaio seemed back then to me very meat-heavy and overly decadent and dark for a weekday dinner with all those rich interior colors.  Decades later, there I am, ensconced in the Vespaio lushness--and loving it--enjoying an exquisite meal.  It is all light and friendly, buzzing with impeccable and attentive service.  Though maybe everyone s on their extra-special best behavior with Claude working the front of the house while the manager is out on his honeymoon.

A real treat was Claude's declaring that once we ordered, he would pick out our wine. Yes! 

Ever since a 2010 stay in Paris, when I said "no" to the nice Frenchman from the apartment agency who offered to open  the bottle of Bordeaux for me as he finished  handing over the keys and the introductory tour of that adorable Place Monge one-bedroom apartment, my rule of life has been to never say "non" when there is wine and a Frenchman concerned.  This means that the rule is always say "yes" to the offer of a Frenchman picking out wine.  

We had order fish and what we learn are the first of the season's soft shell crabs.

Claude asks for my preferences.  I try to think of something more interesting than: "Anything you pick out."

I'm a red wine gal, except for summers in Austin (or Paris), when it's rosé all the way, man.  I know from past experience Claude is not one to be rigid about what wine goes with what--when it comes to the notion of white wine with the seafood.  I am not concerned then to admit that I am leaning toward something red.  In that case, he says, perhaps a Pinot Noir and keep it light.  As we are celebrating France this night, of course the wine has to be French.  He decides this little esoteric gem is the way to go.  And once we hear his colorful account of visiting this small production vineyard in the Jura, the answer is of course a resounding "Yes!" to this selection.  

Today I see that this was perhaps even more of a treat than I appreciated Friday night.  

The producer, Jacques Puffeney, something of a legend for his wine production in the Jura, is stepping down.  No one in the family to take over the family business:

The son of a vineyard worker, Puffeney and his father began working little more than an acre of vines in 1962; Puffeney started bottling wines in the 1964 vintage and soon won acclaim. Though Puffeney has never traveled overseas, in the past 20 years his wines developed a loyal American following, with demand outstripping supply of just over 800 cases annually in the U.S. (about 40 percent of his total production).

“My heart is broken,” said Neal Rosenthal, who imports Puffeney’s wines to the U.S. “He was one of the Jura’s best traditional producers. It’s sad to lose this great tradition and heritage.”

Puffeney, whose two daughters were never involved in the domaine and were not interested in taking over, said he would have preferred a solution that would have kept his 15-acre domaine intact, but no plan could meet both his own needs and comply with the restrictions of French law.

Read more here.  More good reasons to visit Vespaio: Will need to drink up the rest of what Claude has left of this beautiful wine.

 

 

 

France / Food Reverie / Detoxing

On day 12 of this cleanse/detox regime that I do twice a year (and usually after a France trip), I am acutely aware of how much of our television diet includes intensively evocative, sexy images of food.  As I am apart from that world right now, eating organic only, extremely low to no carb, and drinking about a gallon of spring water a day amidst a ton of vegetables, it's a good time to think back on that food-laden time just three and one-half weeks ago, not just in Angers but also the Paris part.

I bet you were not expecting this.  These are jelly beans.  Something I would not ordinarily be interested in, but a friend hanging with me at the Bouvet Ladubay bar/lounge insisted they were amazing.  They are hand-crafted, thus the uneven roundness, at the Q&K Confiserie in Angers.   They were not icky.   They were very delicious.

I enjoyed so many things about my stay at the Hotel Mercure right there next to the Centre des Congres.  Breakfast, absolutely.  The lighting in the rooms.  The proximity to Premiers Plans film festival.  And some of the business lunches there were quite lovely. I had to get this little dessert from the buffet bar just to get a picture of it.  Adorable.

To get one of those many official lunches for us off to a right start, there was this array of amuse-bouche.

I wanted one, very badly. They were so cute.  But I was in professional mode, and there were just too many interesting people to meet and talk to over this lunch.  

There was local fine wine of course.  I had some of that.

At a chamber of commerce new year's wishes event over at the stunning Greniers Saint-Jean, it was finally cocktail time after the speeches and power points  There was this non-alcoholic piña colada.  I had serious doubts about having anything like this in France.  It was delightful. Not too sweet. Just nice and delectable.  I did not need a second one though.

Once I found the very local, fresh and tangy cheese offerings, I did need more than just one bite of those samples. The Mayor caught me on my fifth little bite.  This cheese...the cheese is seriously my downfall when in France.

No trip to Angers is complete without a lunch or dinner at Chez Rémi at 5 rue des Deux Haies.  The hot savory soup with spicy crunchy chorizo did not disappoint.

It was soon back to Paris to finish up a work project.  There were chocolates waiting for me in the apartment (an upgrade I lucked into).

I finally made it out the next morning to do some shopping for basic foodstuffs so I could make some breakfast of protein at the apartment.  This routine only lasted for one morning.  I ended up always meeting Maureen in the morning for coffee at the St. Regis on the Ile St. Louis, where she would deliver a print-out of a document I needed.

The new favorite beverage: double espresso with a pitcher of hot milk on the side.

After that one, and after about an hour into our stay there at the St. Regis, she says. "I think I feel like another one of these."  Oh, she so read my mind.  I had one too. It was a 4-espresso morning.  I was on fuego for that day, as friend Mollie would say. Lots of work done that day, followed by a run along the Seine in the late afternoon.

And then you know what? I was tired of French food.  Yes, it's true.  I needed Italian food for a change.  

This polenta fritta seriously hit the spot, with this rocket salad with pine nuts.  But the best was yet to come.  This was not a bread-heavy trip at all, but this bread was out of this world.  The combo of bread and this heavenly pasta dish...probably why I felt a couple of pounds heavier on the trip back.

The restaurant was Bafo - cannot find anything on it en anglais.  But our server could not have been cuter in telling us to come back closer to 10pm, when we stopped by at 9pm thinking to sit right down.

We killed time in this, uh, interesting cafe down the street.

 With the electronica music blaring we started in on more red wine.

Funny how quickly a 45-minute wait goes this way.

And let this be a reminder.  

If you need to wait for a while before you can be seated, you do not just hang around the venue as in the US at most places.

There is just no room.  

You just leave and come back.  This works out fine when there are venues at which one can wait it out of course.

The next night we ate at Au Petit Fer Au Cheval.  It is friend Maureen's favorite watering hole in the Marais, as it is for many other regulars there.  I had no idea they had that tiny salle back behind the bar area.  It helps being with regulars.  We were seated right away. I had confit de canard, preceded by a giant crudité salad, which I desperately needed to get something from the vegetable food group into the day's food intake.

Then I was stuck inside the whole next day, Monday, and before you know it, with my deadline made 4 hours before the taxi came to get me, I was en route back to Austin.  Even on 3 hours sleep I could appreciate the beautiful restroom facilities at CDG airport.  

Note: there is no one at CDG at 6am in the morning. Will get there at 6:30 next time for that early BA flight to London.