Paris: The Food, the Rad, and the Pugly

I'd like to think of this as my garbage-pail-soup-post, in the culinary sense: it's where I throw all my leftovers together to make a delicious appetizer. An appetizer for what I believe will be my last Paris post (yes, I realize this all happened in early January. Do you even know me?). So these are my leftover photos, the ones that don't quite fit into any category, but that please me so much that I just had to horn them in somewhere. 



The Centre Pompidou is a modern center of many arts: film, all pieces two-and-three-dimensional, things organic and plastic, and all in a cleanly designed, open building. A building with stunning views that I did not quite manage to do justice to. I could have lived there, or at least spent several more hours there than we did. The gift shop was a mecca of hipster-decor and bohemian-chic that I am too poor to be able to do anything but hold it longingly and hope that a passing Parisian aristocrat (they still have those, right?)  would take pity and just buy it for me. No such luck; I suspect they don't actually have aristocrats anymore.

I designate this bright blow-up sculpture as "The Rad"- the colors are most certainly rad, but also, I needed that final pun for my post title. Apologies. 

My friend had a desperate email need, so we stopped in an Internet cafe we found after hours of keeping our eyes peeled. While she did her business, I wandered around the funky-fresh little shop, which had shelves full of manga and walls covered in murals of sprightly steam-punk Japanese girls. The cafe-owner was, rather incongruously, a middle-aged, highly respectable, matter-of-fact Frenchwoman. She softened, however, when I expressed interest in the shopdog, a pudgy, placid pug; I asked her what his name was, and she responded, "Broosah." I must have looked blank, because she added, "Tu sais, comme Bruce Willis." She thought he looked like the American action star: I leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions. 

So little Bruce Willis and I became fast friends; he enjoyed attention and the "excited" face I put on for infants and animals. An unfortunate and hopefully allergy-free customer left his coat on a chair while he web-surfed, and Bruce Willis hopped onto it and made himself comfortable. I was quite sad to take my leave of him. 

And onto the food. France may be a food-lover's paradise, but not if said lover is vegetarian. However, I love sweets and breads, so I found enough to sustain myself. This lovely rose-hued (and rosewater-flavored) treat was, essentially, a huge chunk of marzipan. As an almond-paste lover, I was in heaven, although I couldn't eat the whole thing at once, as the intense sweetness was almost overwhelming. In the best possible way. 

A macaron, bien sur. I was determined to have one, even if it was a cheap-o one from a corner Persian corner shop. So what? It was still wonderful- the crisp shell giving way to the chew of the interior and the burst of raspberry in the center. It's such a cliche to wax rhapsodic over French cuisine, but as a bitter herbivore I usually don't feel the temptation. Their desserts, however- well, pardon my waxing.

This is, in my opinion, also quite Rad. When my sister visited me in the UK during the winter, she was disappointed that we couldn't find real, dead, corpse-y mummies in the British Museum. Sarcophogi were simply not going to cut it. So, sister of mine, this one's for you, straight from the Louvre.