Choucroute and Fontainebleau

Saturday morning as we were walking back from parking the new car in the garage we stopped at a local market. We poked around for a little while and came upon a butcher's stand selling choucroute. Since Dave is a new fan of the German dish, we decided to buy some for lunch.

What we didn't know about ordering choucroute is that one orders the sauerkraut by weight, then selects the meat to go with it. We thought we'd just order "1 kilo" and get kraut, potatoes, and meat all in one container without any more communication. So after the butcher had dished up 1 kilo of kraut and stood there expectantly, we knew we were in trouble.

We pleaded "viande", as in "please add meat!" and the butcher said "oui!" as in "yes, tell me what you want!"

So we staggered for a few minutes until the guy in line behind us figured out what was going on and cheerfully explained every cut of meat available for choucroute in English. We were so relieved and amazed by his excellent English language skills, I just wanted to hug him.

Anyway, we wound up with enough food to feed four, so we brought it home and surprised Kathryn with a German lunch.

After that, for Kathryn's last day in town we decided to take a small road trip out to Chateau Fontainebleau. Unfortunately, the car and choucroute business took all morning and we didn't get going until 3:00. By the time we reached the castle it was close to closing time, so we walked around the grounds and took photos.

On the way back we passed a park of huge boulders that looked interesting, so we stopped to have a small hike. It was a really fun place that is apparently quite popular with the "bouldering" crowd.

We also stopped in the village of Barbizon for a quick look. It has a reputation of being an artists' hang out, but we didn't see anyone particularly artsy, just a few galleries.

And then on the rest of the drive home we got stuck in Paris traffic. Locals coming home from their ski vacations I guess. We must have been in the car for 2 hours and sitting in the back I got really car sick.