Description of my trip to France of course, the first thing I ran across was a Farmers’ Market    where I ate this delicious ham and cheese sandwich. I decided it would be my mission to eat As Much Ham As Possible while on this trip.

Then I made my way to Santec.

Santec is a tiny town on the west coast of France. The area known as Brittany, where the people identify as Britons first and French second. My friend Yann picked me up from the train station, and to give you a sense of the scale of the town, his adorable 5 year old nephew, Noah, had tagged along to see the “visiting American.”

We took a day walk to an island called the Ile Carot as we went further along the path, we rounded a bend and walked past a small house. A woman in the yard flagged us down and started chattering urgently with Yann. I couldn’t make out out much except for her asking if we were staying on the island for the night. Turns out that the tide was about to wash out our road back! Yann and I high-tailed it back down the path, running as fast as we could for fear of being stuck on the Ile Carot for the night! Which sounds like the beginning of a fanciful children’s tale. We got to the walkway and found that, indeed, it was already washed out!

And yes, I took that photo as bolted across the beach. I had to capture the moment, right? One of these days a momentary pause like that will be the ruin of me. There was luckily another entry point on the side of the inlet, and we ran across it before the tide could take that as well.

We got back to Yann’s, and his mom had made us a delicious dinner of lamb, potatoes, and green flageolet beans. Flageolet beans are apparently known as the “caviar of beans” in French cooking. They’re creamy and keep their shape. I kind of can’t stop thinking about them. I’ll have to find some dried beans here in LA and post a simple recipe to the cooking blog.

That night, deciding I’d had enough of frigid coastal beaches for one trip, I looked into visiting another town on my way back to Paris. My guidebook suggested Rennes, a small medieval village/university town. So I signed onto my couchsurfing.org account and tried my last-minute luck. A couple people wrote back, and I made arrangements to stay with a lovely girl named Melissa. Rennes is definitely worth a day trip. I spent the whole time walking from one end to the other, eating as many croissants and pain au chocolats as I could along the way. Look at these beautiful half-timber buildings:

Like something from a medieval fairytale village.

Melissa took me to dinner at a creperie with four of her friends. I had the Bretton specialty– a Bretton galette. Ham, cheese, and egg folded into a special wheat crepe. Delicious!

Then, of course, a dessert crepe. I went with blueberry. Looking at these photos again makes me desperately miss French food.

From there, it was a 2 hr train ride to Paris. Funny thing about the French rail system– just because you’ve purchased a ticket does not mean you’ve purchased a seat. I learned this the hard way, after getting kicked out of the seat I picked by a tall French man, who was clutching his ticket, pointing at my seat number, and yammering incomprehensibly.

Now, Paris. I’ve been to Paris before, and was set to write the city off as familiar and uninteresting by now. And then I got there and remembered that it IS Paris. And it IS magnificent.

I did the customary walks around Montmartre, the Latin Quarter, the Marais, Notre Dame, the Champs-Élysées. The big-ticket items. I skipped all museums because I’ve done them before. I did, though, make a special trip to the Shakespeare & Co bookstore, which has been featured in a bunch of films. The place is charming, and every corner, nook, and cranny is filled with books. Books on top of books, sandwiched between books.

I want to live there.

The France trip came to an abrupt end because a big snowstorm was approaching Atlanta and threatened to ground flights. And the cold, snowy weather had returned to Europe, also threatening to ground flights in Paris. So we hedged our bets and took a standby flight back to the States. It was either that or be stuck in Paris, which sounds like it would be lovely, but I unfortunately had to get back to LA.

Reflecting a few days later, the best thing about France is the food. When visiting, my advice would be to be frugal with accommodation and other expenses, but to splurge on the food. Because you’ll find yourself, a day later at home, hunched over a spread of Nutella and grocery store-bought croissants at 3:45am because you have jetlag and can’t fall alseep, and you’ll curse how tasteless the croissants are, and wish you were walking the streets of a French city, greedily nibbling at the buttery, flaky 1 euro croissant in your hands.