Rachelle Delaney

Okay. One more post about France before I get back to business. Cause fall’s a busy time, and there’s lots of writing-related events coming up. But before we get into those, I’d like to share with you a few things I learned about France. Perhaps you’ll be surprised. I know I was.

1. Parisians are really nice people.

It’s funny that North Americans in general love Paris but have such contempt for Parisians. I’ve been told countless times of their snobbery, their tendency to make you feel like toe crud, their disdain for Anglos with bad French accents. But to be honest? I found them perfectly lovely – helpful, polite, good-humoured. Well, with the obvious exception of the kid who body-slammed me, but honestly? I think he’d planned to nudge me, and overestimated my body weight. Or my capacity to stay upright. You should have seen those café chairs flying.

2. The French Heart NY

Like, in a bad way. It seems that every young person, especially in the cities, owns a white I Heart NY T-shirt. The shop windows are full of ‘em. I thought this odd, especially given that Freedom Fries fiasco some years back. So I accosted a young lawyer on a train to Rennes, who told me that it’s every young person’s dream to go to New York City. It’s the only city in the world better than Paris. Is what he said. Huh.

3. The French Miss MJ.

In a bad way. Near the end of my trip I met an American who asked if I’d witnessed any of the countless Michael Jackson tributes going on throughout the country. At the time I hadn’t, but the very next day I came upon my first, outside the Pompidou in Paris. It was a group of about 15 youths, dressed in MJ T-shirts and single gloves, doing a somewhat-choreographed lip-synced line dance to Thriller. A big crowd had gathered, and we watched them moonwalk for a good half-hour, although to be honest it was kind of painful. The crowd was just so polite – I didn’t want to be the only one up and leaving. Which harkens back to Point Number One.

4. There is Life After Baguettes.

This trip marked my first foray abroad as a diagnosed celiac – one of those poor shmucks who can’t eat gluten. Not even a molecule of it. So I got a lot of horrified reactions from friends before I left. “But you can’t eat baguettes!” they cried. “Why are you going to France?” Well, the truth is, there’s a lot more to eat in France than bread and pastries. There’s cheese and olives and fresh fruit from Provence. And macaroons and crème brulée. But there’s also a growing number of French celiacs, and so it’s easy to find gluten-free Madeleines, gluten-free croissants, even gluten-free baguettes. I didn’t miss out at all. I had my sorghum baguette and ate it too.

It’s always hard to answer the question, “How was your trip?” How to sum up 19 days of adventures, encounters, mishaps, and successes? My trip to France was fabulous, exhausting, thought-provoking, refreshing, blister-inducing, stiflingly hot, nerve-wracking, delicious, and utterly rewarding. I drank countless café crèmes in cafes. I trolled outdoor markets for cheese and olives and fresh peaches. I rode a white cheval Camarguais over salt flats, flanked by flamingoes. I drove the winding roads of rural Brittany, getting hopelessly lost every day.

I wrote. I read. I photographed macaroons.

The best place I stayed: an organic farm in Normandy, surrounded by sheep and rolling green hills.

The best thing I ate: Macaroons, bien sur. Followed closely by yaourt gelato.

What I regret most: not being able to recall any French swear words to hurl at the Parisian teen who bodychecked me into an outdoor café while I was running one morning. And not eating more macaroons.

Things I’ll do next time: Face the Louvre. Memorize my swears. Bring along a navigator. And eat more macaroons. But you knew that.

Market in Aix en Provence

Beloved farmhouse - La Metairie

Le Camargue

Beloved macaroon

I have just returned from a fabulous adventure in France, and I’ll soon regale you with tales of the past three weeks. But for now, a quick but important post. A follow-up, really, to the last post about baked goods.

Now, it’s all well and good to wonder what you would be if you were a baked good. But have you ever wondered what paradise would be if it were a baked good? No? Me neither. But last week, I found it.

It is a French almond macaroon.

Think of it like a small sandwich. Except instead of bread, you have almond meringue, perfectly crisp on the outside and moist and chewy on the inside. And instead of, say, peanut butter, you have custard and raspberries.

Custard and raspberries, people.

It exists. I promise. Now go, get thee to the Biocoop in Paris. Boulevard Sebastopol.

You won’t be disappointed.

A chocolate macaroon. I would have photographed the raspberry custard one, but I ate it too fast.