Drawings of France

Everywhere we went, we started the day with coffee in a café


In Paris we saw my friend Graziella every day, sometimes for drinks, sometimes for dinner. One time we had cocktails at happy hour in a bar called "Indiana," which is a sort of Parisian take on an American bar, with a sidewalk-café setup. Not that we go to France for American-style bars, but it was fun.

From Paris we went to Brittany, which is really beautiful terrain. Along the coast we stopped and hiked along various rocky headlands.


Brittany is the home of those famous striped mariner's shirts that your typical cartoon Frenchman wears. I was coveting them everywhere I saw them, but felt afraid to look like a tourist. Then I noticed that even locals were wearing them, albeit usually women. Finally I tried one on... the sleeves were to short and the body too loose for my taste, so I went without.

Brittany is also famous for seafood and dairy. I insisted on having a kouign amann every day, which is a Breton pastry that is made with copious amounts of butter (pronounced "queen ah-MAHN"). They can be unbelievably delicious, but recipes vary from place to place, and a mediocre one is an enormous disappointment. I must learn to make these myself.

We both ate a lot of seafood, especially Eric, who ate creuses oysters almost every day. Creuses have one flat shell and one deeply cupped shell that holds a lot of salty oyster juice. I liked them a great deal more than the more expensive, harder to find plats oysters, which have very shallow cups and a somewhat metallic aftertaste. (The taste of creuses is more like American oysters.)

Labels: drawings, personal

posted by Tony at 11:52 AM