I didn't end up writing a post on the fifth week, and that's mostly because nothing unusual happened on the fifth week. I went to classes without interruption from strikes. I chatted at conversation club hour. I ate a lot of bread.
On Friday the 10th, I went shopping with Sydney, because we sort of needed things and we also mostly wanted things. We poked our heads into Kiabi, which advertises "fashion at a small price." We found many small prices, and we also found sweatshirts supporting the fifty-two states of America. Whether this is a simple mistake or some sort of misguided campaign for the statehood of Puerto Rico and Washington DC, we aren't completely certain. H&M and Zara seem to be the same everywhere. We walked around a little more before Sydney brought up my earlier plans to find a bakery called Al Rayan. I'd told her that I was going to find it on Saturday, but since we had little else to do, we hopped on the tram, rode it just one stop, and found the bakery easily.
Al Rayan is a Middle-Eastern bakery. Every plate of pastries has a small sign stuck into it with the name of the pastry, its country of origin, and the name in Arabic script. I have been craving chebakia ever since I left Morocco, and I had some of them the night I left. Chebakia are fried twists of saffron dough, soaked in honey and coated in sesame seeds. I love them especially because I learned how to make them with Ouafae and Lima in Rabat and two-year-old Lina learned alongside me. I beelined past the marzipan fruits and the almond cookies and the honeycomb pancakes and pointed at the chebakia right when I laid eyes on them.
"I would like the chebakia," I told the proprietor. "I would like six of them."
I ate two of them right there and the other four were gone before Sunday.
That Sunday, Sydney, Audrey, and I met for brunch at Tabl'o Gourmand, which I mentioned in the scavenger hunt post. This time we headed for the other location, as we were worried that the large location in the center of town would be crowded. Therefore, we found ourselves at the slightly smaller location close to the IES center, a cozy cafe tucked into a side street. It was raining and it was also ten in the morning on a Sunday and we were essentially alone. We shared the basket of bread--still warm and soft and spread with violet jelly and cherry jam and Ovamaltine, the crunchy nutella, essentially. I decided to go all in for the Tabl'o Gourmand signature brunch, which came in waves.
First thing was a chocolate chip muffin and a coffee, followed by plain yogurt with honey, scrambled eggs with fried bacon, and then the brunch salad. At Tabl'o Gourmand, the brunch salad is a cup or so of salad surrounded by three different cured meats and three literal bricks of cheese. Warning: if you eat the whole Tabl'o brunch like I did, you might not eat anything else for the rest of the day.
After the brunch, Sydney reminded us that it was Fete de la Science in Nantes, which meant that the natural history museum was free. If a museum that you normally pay for is free, you should go see it. I really do love the natural history museum at Nantes--it is structured in levels, from geology to mammals and sea-creatures, and then birds and seashells on the loft level.
And so that weekend was much more exciting than the week that preceded it.
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