Say "fromage!"

This week was probably the most normal of any so far, I really have a routine now and it's nice to have a sense of what I have time to do each day. Monday mornings I lounge and do homework before meeting friends for coffee and class at 2:30, Tuesdays I'm in class all day and come home to crash, Wednesdays I have completely free for grocery shopping, sightseeing, etc., Thursdays I have class in the morning and come home to nap and go out walking/sightseeing later. I don't have many Fridays left in town (because I leave for most of my trips on Thursday afternoons) so today I slept in late and plan on visiting a few churches in the area (St. Sulpice, Eglise St. Germain-des-pres and Notre Dame). But Wednesday I had a great time at Salon du Chocolat with Tenny and Jen! Basically, the Salon travels internationally and appears in major cities like New York, Tokyo and Paris for about a week. Local vendors appear with their wares and for a 12-euro entry fee, you can go and sample pretty much everything there (and of course buy bigger portions too)! I think my sugar tolerance is going down, because it was only about an hour into the event that I started feeling a little overloaded... Ironically, the best chocolate we sampled was from the first two booths we visited - a fair-trade brand called "Alter Eco" and a Kraft brand called "Cote d'Or." I'm a little embarassed about the latter, but it was seriously better than the super expensive brands! Good news for my wallet :) As we progressed into the convention center, we encountered stranger and stranger flavors. We tried chocolate made with flowers, and if you've ever wondered what potpourri tastes like, it's not good. Another notable one was "olive oil chocolate," a small piece of which made the three of us run to wash out our mouths. Truly disgusting. Towards the end, I was turning down samples (I know, right?) because they looked so weird! It was quite an education, though, in the way that chocolate can very SO much in taste, even if they're all labeled 72% dark, for instance.

Potpourri chocolate. Gross. Pretty, but gross.

Pick your percentage! Yes, made of chocolate!

Last night, Tenny, Jen and I met up for dinner with Taylor, her sister Haley and their friend Travis who is visiting for a week. Jen had been wanting to try fondue, and so of course I googled "best fondue in Paris." A few blogs mentioned La Grolle de Montmartre, a traditional Savoyarde restaurant in Montmartre. Savoie is the region of France in the Alps, so literally every dish is a combination of potatoes, cheese and preserved meat. Gotta stay warm, right? It took about 40 minutes of metro travel and walking to get to the restaurant, but luckily it turned out to be totally worth it! The dining room was tiny, with mostly long tables so you eat next to the other customers. Stone walled interior, skis hanging on the walls, kind of dark and super kitschy - perfect! It was obviously run by a husband/wife team and one cook in the back, so of course it was perfectly logical that the couple's two small dogs would be free to roam the dining room and pop their heads up in your lap! The wife was obviously in charge of the joint, and her husband Gerard (tall, lanky, gray-haired man in his late 60s probably) just kind of wandered and talked to people. We were trying to save money (total bill ended up being 15 euros/person!), so we all ordered something (some just salads) and planned to share. Good thing! Two orders of fondue satisfied the six of us along with a couple chicken breasts in white wine sauce, a steak, and a salad. I ordered the salade savoyarde, whose "croutons, ham and cheese" turned out to be three slices of thick crusty bread with ham and cheese melted on top placed on top of a bed of lettuce. Think a salad topped with a croque monsieur minus the bechamel. YUM. The fondue was amazing too, the perfect mix of cheeses and white wine. Everything came with a side of grilled potato chunks. Not to be thwarted by a cheese coma, I convinced everyone to order one dessert to share. After consulting our host, I chose "matafan," advertised as a Savoyarde specialty. Basically it was a wedge of a dense, pudding-like cake made with apples, drizzled with caramel sauce and topped with ice cream. YUM. My comrades, previously moaning about their full stomachs, had to join me in tackling it :) At about 10pm when we were planning to leave, a transvestite guitar player (obviously a friend of the family's) came in and Gerard told us we had to stay and listen. After a rousing rendition of "Aux Champs-Elysees" that had the whole place clapping and singing along, we took a round of pictures with Gerard and Fifi (one of the dogs who he proudly informed us had just had "six babies!" pointing to her stomach). Needless to say, the evening was perfectly summed up by what Gerard told me to translate for everyone (and I didn't even catch the whole thing...): they hope that we see this as a home and that they will always be happy to see us come back! Warm fuzzies :) Please note that all photos have been edited to be able to see what's in them - the restaurant was very dark and lit by red lanterns :)

Would you like some salad with your cheese and bread?

I love cheese!

Sisters :) Haley and Taylor

I'm off on an overnight excursion to Amboise (in the Loire Valley) tomorrow at 7am! We're touring three chateaus in two days, so I'm sure there will be great pictures and stories to follow. Also, I'll have great photos of Gerard and Fifi when I return!