The Smell

So sometimes I feel bad when I am on my way to the Carefour market and I have to stop for a moment in front of the Subway and inhale a small taste of home. You all know that smell I'm talking about, right? It's the almighty Subway smell that was engineered to pull you away from whatever you thought you were going to eat or do at that moment and instead consume the Subway. You just can't escape it! How do they do it?

What I most enjoy about "the smell" is how it reminds me of one wonderful summer in which my good friend Maggie and I drove all over Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan working basketball camps. The lunch of choice? You guessed it: the Turkey sub, on wheat bread, extra pickles from Subway (followed up by an ice cream cone from the McDonald's). It was a fabulous lunch and easily found on the highways that took us from one Univeristy Girls' Basketball Camp to the next. Good times my friend, good times.

Thus, walking off the tram and heading to the market is sometimes briefly interupted by a quick sniff in front of the Subway. I'm back home again and Maggie and I are sucking down our extra large diet cokes and finishing off the last of our 6 inch. Not that I'm complaining or anything. I love where I'm living now and have never eaten so well in my life. The variety, the incredible tastes, the deliciousness! There are incredible sandwich shops that put The Subway to shame and I'm going to miss them terribly when this chapter of my life is over. But like any ex-pat living abroad will tell you, there's no place like home! The smells and all the other little things that remind you of that former life are small treats to savor once in a while. Even if it takes the form of Subway.

Now, granted, I have much fonder, better smelling memories of home than Subway but sometimes we have to take what we can get while living over here. For example, my good friend treats her and her family to a night out at The Hard Rock Cafe Paris once a month to get their greasy American fix. Another friend treats herself to breakfast once in a while at Breakfast in American here in Paris. And although I have yet to breakdown and visit either establishment, I was weakened today but a slice of carrot cake and rice crispy treat at the Sugarplum Cake Shop as my taste of home. How could you, you may ask, indulge in American style sweet treats when you have a delicious pan au chocolate at every corner? Well, we all have our weaknesses and mine is sugar in any form. (Did I mention that they also serve American coffee? Fresh roasted I might add.) We also shared a piece of chocolate cake that had this caramel frosting that floated off the cake and into my mouth. Plus, English was spoken and I didn't have to think and calculate my order in french before reaching the counter. I could mindlessly eat my delicious treats and even ask for more coffee! It was outstanding! Oh, and the little people weren't disappointed either! :)

Annecy

We just got back from one of the best holidays of the year. (Sorry, no offense to the family/friends companions of the summer, we loved being with you all! But if you had come with us to Annecy, you'd understand when I favor it to the rest! Can we still be friends?)

When I booked this apartment, little did I know that we'd be staying in Paradise, Gerard's perfect nickname for his villa in Menthon Saint Bernard. I thought I had simply booked a lovely little apartment not far from the lake and conveniently located near the shops of Menthon. What we discovered upon our arrival, thanks to Monique's generous offer to pick us up from the train station and avoid a 2.5 hour layover in Annecy after a 3.5 hour train ride, (HUGE!! Thanks Monique!), is that we truly landed in Paradise. The perfect little apartment opened onto a fabulous patio and garden, a garden that they openly shared with us and invited us to feast on all it's products. We started with one of the biggest zucchini's I'd ever seen in my life and continued munching on tomatoes all week. Add in fresh basil, parsley, purple spinach, beets, peppers, potatoes, and the most fabulous of all, zucchini flowers! A southern France delicacy, the male zucchini flowers is a very special treat. Gerard dipped them in crepe batter and fried them up for us on the second night as a delicious aperitif. A new, fantastic gastronomic adventure that we went back for the following night. Why not? There was left over batter and lots of flowers!

I could go on and write a novel about the week of a lifetime in Paradise, but in the interest of keeping my audience interested, the few and the loyal, and getting outside to blow some bubbles with the ladies, I'm going to throw down a list of the top adventures of the day and upload some pictures. Not the best blog entry of my life, but there are bubbles to be blown! Here's our week in Paradise in a nutshell:

• Amazing dinners from the garden. Sometimes close to 100% fresh! (too bad you can't "grow" cheese and baguettes)

Celia munches on spinach salad with tomato bread after picking our own carrots and spinach! Amazing!

• Sitting on a hammock
• Hiking and climbing...eating wild mushrooms and drinking water from a mountain stream
• Visiting "Cinderella's" Castle
• Seeing Mars as close to the moon as it's been in YEARS! Ahhh, to be out in the nature again! No trams, buses, trains, alarms! It was fabulous! (BTW, the picture below is our backyard! We shared the area with the horses...)
• Reading!!! (books without pictures!!!)
• Picking mushrooms and cooking them up for another fabulous treat! Oh yes, we ate wild mushrooms picked from the earth a few hours before. It was amazing!
• Ice Cream and floatees!
• Hiking in and out of rain although I would have to say I prefer the hikes sans la pluie!
• Being naked in your own backyard...(although you could probably pull that off in Paris too! :)

Alright, bubbles are waiting and I have to go! Looking forward to a quiet September...school starts on Thursday for Elise and I may have found a spot for Celia a few times a week. More on that later but keep your fingers crossed!

Happy Labor Day!

The Loire #2

Did I mention that my lady likes princesses and dresses? I'm not sure sometimes who this little one belongs to, but I guess she's mine! She's super sweet and I'm going to keep her, but where did she come from? :)We promised to return to this store in Chinon when Elise is six so that we can buy her a dress. She's 3 and a half right now and CAN'T WAIT!

So, we returned to the Loire but did I also mention that we caught the last stage of The Tour? It was awesome! Lance totally saw me and winked! I wish he would focus more on riding when I come watch him (he pulled the same thing back at in '08 at the Tour of California) but I guess he just can't get over me....

Anyways, the experience was awesome! From the crazy French lady trying to sneak up on us for a front row seat after we had been waiting for FOUR hours to the awesome 8 loop view of the riders, it was pretty fabulous to witness and see live! We loved it! It was a great final to our awesome Euro Sport Summer: Rugby in Paris, World Cup in Amsterdam, Tour de France! We're super cool!

But back to the Loire and Bretagne. The second trip to the Loire was great fun and we were able to explore more castles and gardens. The gardens of course were far more beautiful in the summer than winter. Flowers, roses, herbs, and vegetables everywhere and the ladies had a blast running through them, especially the Jardin de Villandry . We had great weather and the whole trip was just perfect.






This time around we were able to visit the Sleeping Beauty Chateau (Chateau d'Usse) and Breze Chateau. Elise was in heaven in Sleeping Bleauty's house and was able to explore the story of the beautiful princess. Breze was really cool because it has an incredible underground fortress to explore as well as a fabulous winery. It was fun for all ages!

After Loire #2 we were off to the west to Bretagne. We stayed on a beautiful little patch of land stretching out the southern coast of Bretagne in a city called Quiberon. Our fancy hostel accommodations were great and we had fun exploring the beach town and attempting to swim in the freezing Atlantic Ocean. The most awesome part of our stay was the restaurant that we ate ate for two of our three dinners. Now what amazing French Bretagne food brought us back for two out of our three meals you may be asking? Well, it wasn't the fabulous food, it was the fabulous playground on the terrace that kept bringing us back. The ladies played all night while we quietly ate our dinner. It was so amazing and free babysitting! Why haven't more people picked up on this besides McDonalds? :)

Our stay in Bretagne was totally mellow and great vacationing. We woke up late, hung out on the beach, and B and I took turns exploring the coast in the afternoons. We appreciated the down time, the great beaches, (even in the cold drizzles), and the ladies sleeping until 10:00 one morning. An awesome vacation!

You know it's August in Paris

when even the Post Office has limited hours! I mean, I can accept our favorite Boulangerie taking off for the month like everyone else and I really miss my cheese guy at our local market. But the Post Office? I guess since most of Paris goes away for the month, there's no need to deliver any mail. No one is home to receive it! Ah, the life of the Parisians. Can you beat it?

We will finish our vacance d'ete on Saturday with a week in Annecy, Menthon-Saint Bernard to be exact. We have rented a little apartment on the lake and plan to DO NOTHING for the week except eat, drink, swim, hike, and relax! I guess that's not a whole lot of nothing but it'll be great and I'm really looking forward to it. It'll be a trip for just us Fischers after sharing lots of vacation time with friends and family.

Since we last spoke the Fischer gang had just returned from The Netherlands to a houseful of college roommates and the grandparents. Although it may sound crowded, it was very fun to return to Paris to all our friends and family. Thus started the Tour de Paris/France/Barcelona avec mes amis and mes parents. It was great to be in Paris again and fun to see it with friends and family. I enjoyed returning to the parts of the city that I had seen before and exploring others for the first time. I could probably go to the Musee Rodin a million times, (I've been six times now in our year of Paris, free entree to the jardin avec enfant!!!!), and still discover something new each time. That's true about every part of Paris. Nothing gets old and nothing is ever the same twice. I feel like you can never capture any one part of Paris so I feel so lucky that I get to go back to places so many times and discover them all over again. The Musee Rodin, The Arc, Elise's Tower, none of it ever gets old! Thus, exploring Paris and being the master tour guider with all our different guests throughout the summer never got old and only enhanced my feelings of amazement that I actually live here. I'm a lucky lady!

So, Paris. We saw lots of it. We also returned to Normandy and The Loire Valley. It was so so great! I got to take my parents to Normandy which was super cool since my dad is really into war movies and documentaries. Seeing the beaches, the bomb craters at Pointe du Hoc, the cemeteries, and imagining what it must have been like for the soldiers is quite simply unbelievable. I wish I could better describe the mind blowing experience it is to try to re-live D-Day. You are left breathless.

We returned to Paris where the site seeing continued. We had a list of places to see in Paris during the few days we had between our Normandy adventure and the next vacation, Barecelona. We made it to Elise's tower, Sacre Coeur and the special stairwell, and the Arc de Triomphe. I loved playing tour guide for my parents and was once again fascinated with this city I call home. The wonders, the sites, the fun are never ending and so great to share! But ah, there's also Barcelona!

We got to spend a fabulous week in Barcelona in a great apartment in El Born. We ate great food, sat on the wonderful beach, shopped/ate in the fantastic market of La Rambla, and caught a few sites. It was nice to relax and not try to be crazy tourists in the city. Between my parents and me and Brian we took turns watching the ladies and also having great quiet adult time. I got to go shopping all by myself! It was glorious and I got a great new skirt! :)

Upon returning home to Paris, we accomplished some of the final goals of my parents vacation: we ate Le Menu avec entre, plat, et desert that included some escargots and duck confit. We also finally got them to the Lebanese sandwich shop, (a must for all our visitors!). It was such a fabulous visit and I'm so so glad they made it out here for the month. The ladies loved having them here and played so hard with them. Thanks to gamma, Elise has been thoroughly schooled on all the princesses of the world and is in love and awe. She wears her "princess" dresses all the time and always wants to know, "what is Cinderella doing? Where is sleeping bleauty?". It is very sweet and my lady has a new obsession. It was a great visit and the Gamma and Pops are the Best!