An epic week continues...

On Wednesday, my mom and Shuli drove three hours to Belgium to get the best beer in the world. Shuli's guest post to come, because there's no way I could do it justice.

"All real life is meeting"

My first class got cancelled on Wednesday because of the strikes (my teacher couldn't get to his train station because the strikers were blocking it), so Anne and I did work and were productive while we waited for our evening class/my mom and Shuli to return. After we finally met up with them at the hotel, tried the beer, and died a little inside, we all went out for a very late dinner (11pm). We went to Cafe Le Baron, a place nearby that I'd always wanted to try. Turns out it was delicious and very heavy on presentation, with kind of a Middle Eastern edge.

It was delicious though, and it had fun music and a good crowd late into the night. Too bad we were all too exhausted to stay. Then I said goodbye to my Mom, because she was leaving early Thurs morning.


Thursday I met up with Shuli after class. We had lunch at the delicious Rose Bakery, which Maria had told me to go to. We'd already tried to go a couple times, but it's closed on Mondays and never open for dinner. However, it was totally worth the wait. It's a natural foods bakery/store, run by an English and French couple. Shuli and I split the soup, and then he had a parsley and parmesan omelette which was so creamy, and I had a delicious squash tarte/quiche thing. We were tempted by the carrotcake, but we ended up buying the cookbook for my mom, so I'll make it sometime.

After we bought a suitcase for the beer, tried looking for a butter bell for his aunt, and went up to Gare du Nord to buy our tickets for Bordeaux, we finally made it down to the Louvre. We only spent like an hour and  a half there, but even that exhausted us. We looked at some European paintings, the Mona Lisa, and then got a little lost. Woops. Then we trekked across the Champs-Elysées, stopping for crepes and macarons at Ladurée. 

For dinner, after a little bit of wandering, we ended up at Cul de Poule (Chicken's butt/ass), a restaurant up the street from me. All the tables were taken, so we ended up in the loft, essentially lying down and eating our food from a lap tray. There were two other groups of people up there, and really awesome word search wall paper. We were hesitant to eat not at a table at first, but it ended up being so awesome, and our waitress was adorable. After a long dinner, we went back to Shuli's hotel and enjoyed a bunch of the beer we bought in Belgium.

Kiwi and avocado tartar

Shuli and I met up at 9am on Friday morning, which seemed painfully early after all the drinking and walking around and not-sleeping we'd been doing. I slept on the train to Versailles, and then we stopped at Starbucks (so American, I know, but it was necessary. And we ate baguette and cheese from local places near me, so that made it better.) When we got to the castle I kind of felt sick -- way too many people, very stuffy, etc. But it was really gorgeous, and I got to see the Hall of Mirrors, which was closed the last time I was there. We saw the main section, walked through the gardens a bit, and then headed back to Paris for the rest of the afternoon. There was also Takasshi Murakami art on display at Versailles, which was so weird and totally ruined the experience. 

When we got back, we continued our wild goose chase for this silly butter bell. We went to Le Bon Marché, but ended up buying beer and macarons. Then we stopped at an Abbey store, where we had no luck either. And the other kitchen store we found said they didn't have it "at this time." Eventually we gave up, tired and hungry, and went back to Shuli's hotel to snack and drink our beer. We chilled for a few hours, which was very needed. And we packed up the Westvletern, which was quite an experience. For dinner we ended up at Cafe M, the cafe where I would go for wifi all the time at the beginning of the year. We had a delicious wine, and called it an early night so that we would be able to enjoy our wine tour in Bordeaux on Saturday.