Delightful pastries and Invisible Cathedrals

It's not very hard to detect symbols in the French culture. For example.

This:

A raspberry-pistachio eclair :)

and this:

A lemon tart with a chocolate treble clef on top!

are symbols of how much French people value food (especially dessert). La cuisine is practically an art.

Yesterday, Miranda, Megan and I went to a very quaint cafe called Angelina. Apparently it's world famous (although I'd never heard  about it, haha). We could have payed upwards of 25 euros a plate if we had wanted to eat a meal there, but there was only one thing on our personal menus that night:

Hot chocolate.

". . . In the middle of July?" you ask.

Well, you see, this isn't just any hot chocolate. It's Angelina hot chocolate. That's where the world famous part comes in.

And okay, confession time. I don't even know how many years it's been since I've had hot chocolate. The last time I drank some, I experienced so much pain that I haven't had any since. So we'll just say that the hot chocolate was on Megan and Miranda's menus, and I came along for the ride. But usually when that happens, I end up hopping on the ride, too. Needless to say, this was our dinner:

Just imagine melting your favorite chocolate bar, or melting a bunch of chocolate chips, and that's the consistency the hot chocolate was. It was super thick and super rich. I got two spoonfuls down and my stomach started to say, "Do you want to kill me??" I barely managed to eat half a teacup full of the stuff, and I can't quite say that it was worth it . . . I also ate my first millefeuille ever. It was probably the most expensive pastry I'll ever try! I think it was about 7 euros at Angelina's, where normally they're about 4 euros everywhere else I've seen them. But we shared it between the three of us, and then I gave Megan the rest of my hot chocolate to drink because dying that night once was sufficient. :)

Then last week on Thursday, I was walking around the streets of Paris, hoping to find some dinner. I decided to walk some back streets and look at the shops and cafes. When I finally found something that looked pretty good - a quiche loraine and an eclair (because lets be honest, I think eclairs are my most favorite pastry), the next thing I wanted to do was find somewhere to eat my dinner. So I kept walking and soon happened upon a little park. The above picture is of the cathedral that seemed to share the grounds of this park.

So I sat down and lo and behold there was a sign on my bench that said, "Paris, free wifi". So I whipped out my phone and connected to the internet, in hopes that I could call my family :) As I was sitting on the bench, these army guys walked past me. The amount of security here in Paris is crazy, but I sure am grateful for these men who are walking around ready to protect anyone from danger.

I was able to talk to my family for a wonderful ten minutes, and I showed them the cathedral and the park. When I had to hang up with them, I decided to leave to go home. I just had to figure out where I was and how to get back to my apartment. So I started walking around this cathedral and all of a sudden, it began to look familiar . . .

You'll notice if you look closely that these windows don't belong to just any French Gothic cathedral . . . It was the other side of Notre Dame! I've never been all the way around it before, so I was pleasantly surprised when I came around to the front and realized I knew exactly where I was. It's so funny how sometimes things work out for our benefit when we least expect them to :) All in all, it was a very pleasant evening. This little adventure helped me to realize that although in our lives, we may sometimes feel lost and confused because we may not have all the answers to our questions. But if we will just start walking, if we keep going, that's when the Lord can steer us in the direction we need to go. But we are the ones that have to take the steps. Someone once told me that God can't steer a parked car. So I say take courage and keep walking :)


The following pictures are from my adventure on Sunday. I went on a walk around a park called Parc Montsouris. It's a relatively small park filled with pigeons and ducks and black swans (I know, right??), and you'll never guess what else . . .

it was also filled with people playing PokemonGo.

???

For those of you who don't know what PokemonGo is, don't ask me because I don't really know either. Basically, the App uses your surroundings to tell you that there are little Pokemon characters hiding around nearby, and you walk around trying to "find" them, though they are only "found" on your screen. It's kinda like a virtual reality app if I understand correctly. So if you look closely at the picture below, you'll see in the background that I secretly snapped a picture of someone in the process of catching a Pokemon.

 I was disappointed though because there seemed to be so many people using the Wifi to play this game that I wasn't able to connect to it and call my family. But that's ok. I made friends with these black swans.

Another symbol of French culture is a park, or better yet, a park bench. At any given time, you can find lots of people in a park, reading the newspaper, reading a book, talking to their friends, people watching, or playing PokemonGo (as it were). I love this part of their culture because it shows how they really value their time. I don't know what the statistics are in terms of TV watching versus spending time in the park, but I'd say that going to the park is a pretty popular activity. I'm definitely adopting this symbol into my own life :)

Here I am doing a mini piano concert for some elderly people. It was wonderful, and they are so kind to us! One woman we visit always asks if I've found a Frenchman yet, and I have to break her heart every time by saying, "Not yet, but maybe someday!"