Baguettes

It's not like we'd never eaten baguettes before but our first baguette in Nice was like nothing we'd ever tasted. The boulangerie just down the block from our apartment was the first place we visited in Nice, the place we frequented the most often, and the place that holds the strongest memory in our collective family heart.

That first morning we came home with croissant, pain au chocolat, brioche, and baguette. We just couldn't decide. We sampled some of everything. Maybe it was because it was the first time we'd tasted viennoiserie and French baguette or maybe our local boulangerie really was the very best in France. But we fell in love. I don't think a day passed in Nice without us going to "our" boulangerie. Some mornings we would get croissants (for me and H) and pain au chocolate (for the girls), we enjoyed the oh-so-beautiful pâtisseries, but the baguettes became a daily routine.

It seemed appropriate to at least try some other boulangeries and we did so, in Nice and also in some of the nearby towns we explored: Èze, Ville-franche-sur-Mer, Cap d'Ail, Beaulieu-sur-Mer and Monaco. Our local baguette was definitely our favourite. 

On our last week in Nice we decided the girls were ready to go the boulangerie on their own. They had seen how we ordered and knew how we fed the money into the little bill grabber or change machine. It meant they had to walk about half a block and cross two busy roads. It also meant they would have to use the French they had been learning. They very bravely set out alone and we watched them out the window. It was a saturday morning and so busier than usual so it took them a while. But when they came home with their pain au chocolate and baguette they were very proud. Nous aussi. 

When we came back to Calgary we wanted to try to replicate our baguette experience. We asked around. I asked my French teachers. We went to Yann's Patisserie and Manuel Latruwe, supposedly the best in town. They were good but didn't touch our Nice baguettes and they cost more than twice the price. 

As our sabbatical year started to feel more and more like a reality and as our girls started to become more anxious about all the changes ahead, we would say to them, "Think of something positive. What are you looking forward to?". Searching hard they were able to come up with something, "The baguettes.".