So on Friday, we had a scavenger hunt. Quite frankly, I had no intention of participating, but then again, I also had literally no other plans, so I ended up going, and I also ended up going an hour early to have lunch with Sydney. After a good couple minutes wandering around, looking for a bakery that wasn't Paul, we finally settled for little savory tarts. Mine was tomato, which translates just to a flaky crust full of tomato puree. It wasn't terrible, but next time I'll find something else. I also got a tiny chocolate mousse square and have decided that I need to get more of those things. Not to say that cakes are underrated, but I could definitely use a couple more of them in my life.
The scavenger hunt sent us all over Nantes, buying baguettes and post cards and finding the old names of monuments and searching for dates of events. My team got most everything done, even though a few of the required things on the list didn't exist, even after we asked staff members. We were sent to the Fnac to get a "cultural agenda" and I had to ask three different employees, none of whom knew what the heck that was.
After the scavenger hunt, several of us ended up at the Tabl'o Gourmand, a cafe that provides something called a "quatre-heure," or a gouter. We were told that it consisted of some bread, some jam, and a hot drink. It did indeed include a hot drink, but the bread was brought to us in baskets and there were about a dozen different jams and butters, from crunchy chocolate Nutella-style spread to cookie butters to milk jam to green tomato preserves. All of it was delicious and I essentially ate bread and sweet spreads for dinner. In fact, I spent so much time there that I unfortunately missed ballet class and could only eat about a cup of broccoli for my actual dinner.
Yesterday, I woke up with a terribly sore throat at 3am and slipped in and out of sleep until 6am, when I dragged myself out of bed and to the bus stop so I could get to IES by 7:45. We all stood there in the middle of the totally empty street, the whole IES group, before we were packed up in a large tour bus and headed off to Mont Saint-Michel and Saint Malo. I've seen Mont Saint Michel before, with Meije and Jean-Philippe, although not as in depth as yesterday. Mont Saint-Michel is gorgeous; the abbey there is awe-inspiring and free yesterday, thanks to the journées du patrimoine and we (Sydney, Miel, and I) spent a good amount of time standing at the abbey courtyard, looking off towards the sea. The views are incredible and the novelty of the location itself is awesome in every sense of the word, but the food and food service was not very good (Sydney ordered vegetable soup that ended up apparently tasting like rotten vegetables/Windex) and there are tourists everywhere (all signs are in French, English, German, and Japanese). I noticed a lot of French tourists brought their own little picnics to eat at the gardens, and if I ever come back I would definitely do the same and I would recommend others do the same.
While I'd seen Mont Saint-Michel before, the only thing I knew of Saint Malo was from a line in Santiano, and therefore all I knew was that it probably had a connection to trade and sailing. It definitely does; the beach and port are right there and there's a close relationship to Quebec and its trade lines. I did find Saint Malo a little more interesting than Mont Saint-Michel; at least, to me. It belongs to the genre of town that I call "cute French towns that are surrounded by walls because once they were juicy targets for attacks." It's a bit of a mouthful, but Saint Malo is indeed adorable and indeed surrounded by battlements. After spending a while circling the town and looking out at the sea, we got ice cream (my dinner) and then spent some time in a bookstore, where we found an amazing amount of locally published mystery thriller books centered around cities in Bretagne and Normandie that had titles like Barbeque Mortel à Saint-Malo. I did not end up buying any, but I did take pictures.
I searched for a cute mug for several minutes in five different stores before it was time to head back to Nantes, and while I didn't find what I was looking for, I can probably find something here in the city.
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