Le Meilleur du Meilleur

Best lemon-meringue tart:  Perfectly baked, sweet and sour, with glossy puffs of meringue perched on smooth lemon curd.  Found at Au Croissant d'Or bakery near the Copernic bus station.

Best "I hate myself" deal:  Four chocolate croissants for 2.40 euro.  La Grande Cafe, conveniently placed right as you leave the tram at the Commerce stop.

Best cafe: Tabl'o Gourmand forever and ever amen.  Go for the granola and the scrambled eggs for brunch, then the roasted duck with applesauce and goat cheese bagel for lunch, and then all of the baguette and crunchy nutella and spiced hot chocolate for a snack.

Best creperie: My host mom made the best savory crepes, hands down.  They were stuffed with sausage and goat cheese and egg and I loved them.  Second best, Grand-Mère Augustine in Bouffay with the creme-fraiche and smoked salmon special.

Rudest person I encountered: a man who told me how upset he was that I was a foreigner taking advantage of the French university system.  I would have been more insulted, but he was speaking French through the thickest British accent I've ever heard while he was telling me this.

Best class at university: I would say the Law of the European Union, but its only fault was being at 8:30am and lasting for three hours, so I choose the Latin American history course, which was the first time I took a class on that region, and I had the good fortune to have an incredibly articulate, funny professor who demanded order and respect in his classroom.

Best bookstore: Librairie Franklin, two stores over from the bakery with the perfect lemon tart, was the cutest--a tiny, crowded vintage bookstore with books stacked in piles in the middle of the room because the shelves were stuffed.  For actual navigation and selection of newer titles, Librairie Coiffard and its two stores across the street from each other takes the prize.

Best castle:  The castle at Blois, because its tiled floors were so insane and made me extremely dizzy.

Best dinner out: Curry chicken pizza at a pizzeria across from the castle.

Best dinner in: Dany made quiche and galettes and scrambled eggs and sauteed mushrooms and everything was always fantastic, but the galettes were the best. 

Best baguette: There was this one time that Jean-Luc brought a baguette from Trégastel, which is 3 hours to the north.  It was very good.  Also another time I followed a Carrefour employee who was carrying a crate of fresh baguettes into the store and I snagged one while it was still warm.

Best people-watching spot: The tram stop at the University/the steps outside the lecture hall at university.  Everyone's just standing around smoking so it's easy to make up fake backstories or take style tips.

Best wine:  Chinon Red 2013.  Bake it into fudge cakes.  Drink it.  Make your friends drink it.  Choose it over every other wine in a wine bar in Paris even though you know it already.  Save the labels from every bottle you buy.

Best baked creation: Those fantastic golden-brown puffed up choux pastries that I was making like crazy before I discovered the magic of pre-made puff pastry sheets.

Best tourist attraction: Natural History Museum.  Go in the middle of the day on a Friday for maximum "I'm alone in a museum full of dead things" factor.

Best Breakfast: Tabl'o Gourmand if we're talking in Nantes, but if we can extend to everywhere I went this semester, then the Swan at Shakespeare's Globe, because that's where I had my first full English, and I want another one.

Best Train: Most definitely the Orient Express, because it's the Orient Express with champagne and glossy compartments and welcoming, uniformed staff.  Second place is the TER commuter train, because I had a ton more legroom than on the TGV.

Bonus Round--Firsts:

• First train that I can actually remember (vague memories of trains in Virginia and stories of learning to walk on a train in New Zealand do not count)
• First hostel experience--but to be fair, we got a room for two people so we didn't really have the authentic experience.
• First time in the United Kingdom

Un week-end à Blois

This past weekend I went to Blois and I experienced another type of train in the process.

Blois is a small, old town to the east of Nantes, and you can take the TER train there, which is a ride of roughly two hours.  Like on the TGV, I sprung for first class because I like having a whole row to myself, and on the TER like on the TGV, you can get solo seats.  Quite frankly, the TER first class is nicer than the TGV first class--the solo seats are divided by little plastic walls, there are places to hang coats in  between each seat, and room for your bag right behind the seat so you don't have to leave it in the communal baggage area where it might get squished.  Also, I was carrying eight pears in my bag and so I was more concerned about bags getting squished than the average passenger.  I wrote plenty on the train there, and had a great time looking out the windows, since I'd taken a train at 11:18am and not after sunset like my TGV experience.

When I arrived in Blois, it was 1pm and I'd already been warned by TripAdvisor that not only could I not check in to the hotel I'd booked before 5pm, but the hotel itself was pretty much locked until that time.  I decided to take as long as I could to actually find the hotel, maybe eat something, and also scout out my touristy options in the area for the next four days.  I walked around Blois, finding a large shopping center, two nice parks, dozens of signs pointing to the castle, and finally the hotel.  I found it at 2:30pm, pushed on the front door, and, finding it to be indeed locked, I headed up the road and found that I'd made a circle to the train station, so I sat myself in a cafe and stayed there for two and a half hours, making a lemon tart and a double espresso last as long as I could.  I finished reading a book there, too, Reves de Femmes: Une Enfance au Harem, that I'd picked up in Morocco.

At five, I got myself back to the hotel, checked in, and spent the rest of the night watching French TV and writing.

Saturday morning I woke up early and rushed off to the castle, to find that I was pretty much the first person there and that the art museum wing of the structure was closed for the week.  The Chateau at Blois puts a lot of emphasis on architecture of the era on the first floor and holds an immense amount of artifacts in the royal apartments.  The most interesting part of the chateau, and the part that is the most different from the rest of the castles that I've seen in France, is the dizzying tile patterns on the floors.  They are truly incredible and make you feel a little like you're in Wonderland.

After the castle, I walked down a long staircase to find that there was a street market going on!  I love markets maybe almost more than any other type of tourist activity.  I walked as slowly as possible, circling the market three times and finding the Blois natural history museum.

Thinking this was a good idea, I entered and tried to buy a ticket, only to be told that I would have to make the rounds in half an hour and that I should come back after I was full of food and happy.  So I went back to the market and acquired chicken couscous, chebekia, and little sugared brioche bites, which I ate at the hotel.

The natural history museum was very different from the Nantes one.  Firstly, it was tiny, its temporary exhibit featured enormous replicas of all the bugs found in the WWI trenches, and also it was poorly lit and had forest noises playing, which made it insanely creepy.

The Maison de Magie was closed, and so I found myself shopping instead, and I ended up with more books (someone help me).

That whole day I'd been checking my phone to see if I was spending a good amount of time at every destination, and when I was sitting in the room that evening, I realized that I just really, really wanted to be back at Nantes.  I wanted to be in my own room, with easy access to tea.

The next morning, I changed my ticket from Tuesday to Sunday night.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get a refund on the hotel room, but it was a dirt cheap hotel and I took really long showers to make up for it.  I walked around in the morning to find everything closed, then got to the station, got on the train, and went back to home base.

Dany was panicked when I came through the door, but after assuring her I wasn't sick, just lonely, she calmed down.  She'd in fact warned me about that, about being too lonely and bored in Blois, and she was happy to see me.

In a bonus for coming back early, it turned out that university classes were held today.  It's very odd because the university had vacation when IES didn't and IES has vacation when the university still has classes, which is confusing and a little frustrating, but at least I came back in time.