Serious Eats in Paris & Scotland

My best friend of 12 years, Katrina, finally came to visit me in Paris, and it was the best. I could make a top 100 list but I’ll just limit it to top ten:

10. Eiffel Picnic with pita chips & hummus

Pita chips & hummus were a nightly ritual at our apartment.  We would sometimes leave at 11pm to make a grocery store run if we were out.  I could walk blindfolded into Tom Thumb, snag both of these items, check out, and return safely to my car out of habit alone. Backwards. While talking on the phone. Hopping on one leg.  Can’t imagine any other way to get my pita chips.

9. French Food
We ate well.  I won’t go into detail.

Ok I will.

Raspberry millefeuille a la Jacques Genin, with a pot of hot chocolate to wash it down…and a lemon tart…and a caramel tart.  And some of the best caramels in the world OBVIOUSLY.

And on and on and on.  I would need an entire blog post for the desserts alone. 

8. Night Bike Tour

Can we talk about how my ice cream cone is already empty??  Just a hollow shell of a cone that once held ice cream before I hoovered it out of there in 30 seconds flat.

…or how my camera accidentally went off as we hopped back on bikes, and I look like Jack in the Box in this picture.

Paris is SO beautiful at night, I can hardly stand it. Especially as the sun is setting.  BAH.

7. Rue Pasteur Wagner

Shout out to the Watermark peeps!! We found Wagner’s street!

6. Freaky First Night in Scotland

This was the WEIRDEST night. We landed in Edinburgh about 10pm or so and headed to our B&B. We were walking down an eerie, barely lit, yellowish street, silent, empty, and filled with fog – straight out of a scene from Harry Potter. Dementors flew out, tried to suck my soul out of my face, but I cast my patronus (a baguette) and saved our lives.

Then we finally found our B&B and the hostess acted like we were interrupting her in the middle of the night, rushed us through the place, practically threw the key at us and gave us two seconds to make our breakfast order for the next morning.  Katrina wanted something simple like a banana and ended up ordering a traditional Scottish breakfast with smoked salmon & eggs because she got all scared and nervous.  “STEAK! I’ll take STEAK! Ahhh I wanted cereal.  Why did I get that??”

Since we got in so late and hadn’t eaten, we walked down the street to “Crystal’s Unicorn” for some traditional Scottish Chinese take-out.  While walking outside with our food, a gigantic thundering boom/cannon/explosion/firework filled the air at a deafening volume, like we were under attack.  “What is going on??? Why is Scotland so weird???”  This is our “Why is Scotland so weird” face:

First the dementors, now cannon fire, we’re just trying to eat our Chinese food from the glowing purple & blue Crystal’s Unicorn Chinese Palace.

5. Carpet Picnic

We had to eat our Unicorn Chinese on the floor in the bedroom, after stealing forks from the fancy set dining table downstairs, assuming, of course, we would be kicked out the next morning for this theft.

4. The Hairy Coo Tour

A day tour of the Scottish Highlands on the Hairy Coo bus.

We acclimated to hairy coo culture pretty quickly.

3. Holy Grail

Yes, we saw the ACTUAL castle from Monty Python & the Holy Grail. Yes, there were coconuts.  Yes, I galloped around the whole time banging the coconuts together with this exact look on my face.

2. Scottish Food

What’s that? Don’t I eat a 9-foot baguette every day?  Shut up, I eat protein.

Incidentally, I found haggis to be delicious. I don’t know what everyone’s freaking out about.

1. Laughing so hard I tore my abdomen

Or had a hernia. Or both.  More to come on this.  Prepare your abs, do some sit-ups, and we’ll meet back here in a couple days to see the photos responsible for my abdominal tear.