Various and sundry adventures

So I've been meaning to post this picture for a week now (but got distracted with asparagus and tractors, haha), but last weekend I made a Very Important Pilgrimage. Every year, there is a competition for the best baguette in Paris. Obviously. Why wouldn't there be? And then the winner of the competition gets to be the official provider of bread to the Elysée Palace (France's White House) for the following year. For Sarko's nightly dinner and also for fancy state dinners. And of course the winner gets a major boost in sales, since everyone has to go check out what kind of bread the president will be eating for the year.

Anyway, this year's "best in show" is a BRILLIANT situation: it's a boulangerie up by Sacré Cœur, and get this, it's owned by a Senegalese man. Yes! So here we have Sarko, Mr "The immigrants are overrunning our country" being served the best bread in the city by an immigrant. hahahahaha. I really, REALLY hope the boulanger spits in the batter. Just once.

Conveniently, my friend Leslie lives right around the corner from this boulangerie. Her comment was, "yeah, I USED to buy my bread there, but now I can't get anywhere near it, the lines are too long." hahaha. Even so, she agreed to take me there, so here I am posing with a roll from the best boulangerie in Paris. And it was indeed a winner:


On an entirely unrelated note, this weekend, being May Day and all, featured a wine tasting with the Bryn Mawr club of Paris. One of the members has this kick-ass wine cellar, I've never seen anything like it before, in fact. She even had her lantern on display:

Anyway, Ben and I realized quite early on that this was not really going to be a wine "tasting" as much as a wine "drinking" party, haha. We had pondered coming over on the bikes but had thought better of it, and oh were we glad we did, haha. There were 5 varieties and they served two glasses per variety, so yeah...you can do the math. Thank goodness there were a lot of snacks to go with it, as the evening would have ended quite differently otherwise!!!