Salon de thé by Bubba

No gruesome tourists tales today. Sorry folks. I’m trying to do a bit more documenting as well. Looking back in ten years I’ll never remember this stuff so this post is both self serving as well as communicating to you all, friends and family, what’s going on in the Em and Bub world.

Yes that’s me at a salon de thé. I felt it appropriate to eat and drink everything with an elevated pinky (see above picture). But how, you ask, did such a macho, rugged, muscular man like myself wander into a restaurant intended for older well perfumed French women? To be honest, by accident but it ended up being a very good accident.

My friend Jackson and I had the day off so we decided to take bold action and pop our bikes onto the closest RER train and take it to its terminal stop. At random we chose the RER A ending at the St. Germain en Laye.

Getting off the train we blindly sat at the closest outdoor café we could find which happened to be connected to a salon de thé. We were too hungry to find another restaurant and the particular table we chose offered a great view of the chateau. The meal turned out to be reasonably priced at 15 Euro (some kind of gratin potato stew+fruit cake+coffee) and the staff friendly. After the meal, feeling a bit too dainty, we decided to go exploring to try and regain the macho spirit that initially sparked this impromptu trip.

First we got out bearings:

My finger is pointing to La Defense. To the right, barely visible, is the Eifel Tour. Being this far outside the city was great and made me miss my summers spent in the outdoors at NLR.

Then we took to the bikes:

After a while we began to feel a bit patriotic so we started a role-play. I was Louis and Jackson was Clark. Jackson was quick to note my selection of the androgynous name Louis in his attempts to demoralize me and establish himself as alpha male of this exhibition.

Below, Clark examines a flower specimen: