Patisserie

Wait, before I do go to Prague, I've got to tell you about the pastry. And the bakers.

Yesterday I went to the Latin quarter for lunch, and on the way back to the station we stopped at a boulangerie/patisserie to get desert. I've no idea why, we had Vietnamese, and I had pho, so there is really no reason why there was space in me. Must have been the look of the wares, because we went inside, and all we could say was "oooh" - so of course the first thing the baker says to us was "Vous etes Americannes?".

My flute teacher in high school told me a story of when she lived in Paris. She lived above a boulangerie, and they sold religeuses - "nuns", actually choux pastry with chocolate mousse-y stuff inside, one tinier of the same on the top and covered with chocolate. She said she put on 5 kilos simply because of her proximity to these marvels of pastry.

So of course I had to have one of those, and Jen got an opèra - square, also chocolatey - and all the while the baker was joking with us, insisting that Jen called him "jeune homme" (young man, he wasn't) and calling me a marsupial because of my camera bag. I said I nearly was. And in some ways I'm glad that bakeries like that don't exist in Australia because I think that if I lived close enough to a boulangerie I would endeavor to put on more than a paltry 5 kilos.