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December 17, 2013

Maison Larnicol: St Malo chocolate boutique

Sarah Trivuncic What to eat biscuits, chocolate, confiserie, Maison Larnicol, St Malo 0 Comments

This post was originally featured on Maison Cupcake.

Today we go to chocolate heaven and back. This place is truly wonderful. I discovered it on holiday this summer in St Malo, Brittany.

It’s called Maison Larnicol and sells a fabulous range of sweet treats. I was stamping around St Malo in the footsteps of the delightful and hopelessly chocolate addicted Kerrin of My Kugelhopf who had seduced me with her posts Salted Butter, Sugar and Oh some Flour too and Got Milk? That’s All You Need in search of the Maison du Buerre and other Kerrin haunts.

She never told me about Maison Larnicol so today I attempt to out Kugelhopf the Kugelhopf but I’ll never top those blog post headlines *must try harder*.

It’s a dark little shop with wall to wall wooden cabinets of buttery Breton biscuits and chocolate and serve yourself tongs to fill up your paper bags. Think “scoop and save” but classy.

Not only do they sell macarons but chocolate grand pianos.

And chocolate SHOES. Who needs Laboutin eh?

“Les Chocolates Self Service”. I love it when the French adopt English words as their own, like le weekend although it too me a while to realise that om-bugger was not something rude.

Les Galets. AKA big fat discs of chocolate with fruit and nuts on them. Which count towards your five-a-day.

These ones look more like olives than olives do.

And some massive coloured meringues. Must make these some day.

Sucette, French for lollipop, is a word that always makes me snigger and never more so than at the sight of these little chaps.

Swoon. The Kouignette. These ones are blackcurrant cassis flavour. Here is one I took home up close:

With a bite taken out, just to taunt you.

These are pistacho flavour kouign amanns. Read Kerrin’s piece for the low down on what these babies are all about. Detailed research is not my strong point right now.

Is this the way to St Malo-rillo?

Gulls egg chocolates and rocher – not to be confused with the Ferrero variety.

Inside the gull’s egg. Caramel. Chocolate down fingernails too. Which proves I was enjoying myself.

Macaron chocolate artist’s palette

Framboise macaron heaven, quite possibly my favourite macaron ever. Photographed for posterity.

And hey who’s this? The little boy who fortunately for me, prefers Kinder Surprise.

Maison Larnicol 6 Rue St Vincent, 35400 Saint-Malo, France

December 17, 2013

Cucuron and the outdoor cinema scene from A Good Year

Sarah Trivuncic Places to visit Cucuron, Provence 0 Comments

This post was previously published on Maison Cupcake.

Whether it’s on TV or film, every now and again, the glimpse of somewhere I’ve been before pictured on screen fills me with excitement. Daniel Craig walking down the street where I used to work in Layer Cake. An obscure Tim Roth movie filmed in and around Southgate tube station. Borough Market in Bridget Jones’ Diary.

Sometimes it’s the other way round. I see somewhere on screen and am determined to seek it out and go there myself to feel a little of the magic I felt when watching. Working out which French beach featured the wooden chalets on stilts in Betty Blue with no internet took some detective work I can tell you. (It’s Gruissan near Narbonne in the Languedoc region)

About 4 years ago, in the closing titles of 80s detective series Bergerac on UK Gold, I saw a picture of the plane tree lined pool shown below. Not many people remember that the closing series relocated to Provence rather than its usual Jersey. I have holidayed in Provence many times and was intrigued by this pool which was shown at the very end of each episode. How come I’d never seen it in a tourist guide or on my travels? Where on earth was it?

I was determined to find it, not because Bergerac, my pregnancy craving at the time (others dip Cheerios in ketchup; I watched endless episodes of Bergerac and did 3 Sudoku puzzles per day but have done neither before or since, honest) had been filmed there but out of my quest to know every corner of Provence.

Shortly afterwards I saw my Provencal pool onscreen once more. It was featured in what was to become my favourite film ever, Ridley Scott’s romantic comedy A Good Year starring Russell Crowe and Marion Cottilard. Now this film did not go down well with critics and you’ll probably find more people admitting to liking Bergarac than the film but I know from conversations on Twitter that at least three people, including Juls share my love of it.

Image via bastidequest.wordpress.com

Even freakier, Max (Russell Crowe) has inherited Jim Bergerac’s new house, this gorgeous bastide – Chateau la Canorgue in the Luberon. That’s just spooky.

Happily, locations in the film are much easier to research than a random film still in one series of Bergerac‘s closing titles and I soon deduce that the Provencal pool is in Cucuron, an understated village north of Aix en Provence with no other claim to fame. I conspired to visit during my weekend in St Remy de Provence. We drove there on the Sunday after visiting the busy brocante at L’Isle sur la Sorgue.

We drove to Cucuron and discovered the sleepiest of Provencal villages. Streets were deserted. Saucepans belonging to vielle madames clattered as we passed kitchen windows. Cats barely lifted eyelids to look at us. There was no sign of a square with this huge pool centre stage which had accommodated an orchestra and outdoor cinema showing clips like Charles Trenet singing Boum where Max and Fanny kiss after everyone else has bolted in the rain storm.

Eventually, on the point of giving up, we found a map marking L’Etang and tucked away in a corner we found the pool with a couple of cafes and sat down for our less romantic glass of Sprite and an ice cream next to the local fire station (odd… they disguised this in the film).

Sadly I can’t find clips to embed due to copyright… You can pick up copies of A Good Year for £3.99 on dvd. If you like France, you will enjoy it.

December 17, 2013

From La Coupole to St Germain: existential Paris

Sarah Trivuncic Places to visit, What to eat Montparnasse, Paris 0 Comments

This post was previously published on Maison Cupcake.

This is part two of my three part series about my too-long-unblogged Easter trip to Paris in 2011. Check out part one with my Laduree in Paris visit.

Away from my blog, one of my passions is literature and history of the first half of the twentieth century. I love books, film adaptations and documentaries especially those covering from 1920 to the 1950s.

On my trip to Paris I explored some of the haunts of two of my favourite French writers, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre.

Simone de Beauvoir and John Paul Sartre were amongst a group of Parisian intellectuals known as the Existentialists who found literary recognition from the 1940s onwards.

From our Montparnasse hotel, The Pullman, we were well placed to explore their left bank neighbourhood.

Dining at La Coupole

La Coupole on the Boulevard Montparnasse is one of Paris’s most famous brasseries. With the original Art Deco interior intact it has changed little since de Beauvoir’s time.

From Josephine Baker to Jane Birkin, French celebrities have long frequented La Coupole, the restaurant website even has a list of celebrities at La Coupole saying who used to order what and sometimes which were their favourite tables!

Our corner was an ideal people watching spot. According to La Coupole’s website we were close to de Beauvoir and Sartre’s favourite table 149, sat at the same angle but in the next block. Sartre apparently enjoyed watching the ladies tending the cloakroom from his table.

Simone would order a hot chocolate and sit on the terrace at La Coupole whilst working. In keeping with this, our dining neighbours were single diners engrossed in their laptops (one having a Skype chat whilst he ate).

To review the food this far on would be absurd – as you can see we enjoyed a traditional French brasserie set menu of pate, steak tartare and Iles Flottantes for around 33 euros. All good.

A la carte main dishes cost up to 36 euros and seafood platters costing over 100 euros are available. However the greatest draw at La Coupole is the atmosphere. We secured a table late on a Wednesday without booking – although it was very busy.

Le Jardin du Luxembourg

De Beauvoir and Sartre walked frequently in Le Jardin du Luxembourg. Similar in size to Kensington Gardens, Parisians with young children can enjoy a series of adventure playgrounds. We were (briefly) wistful that Ted wasn’t with us.

Like the beach at Cannes, painted metal framed chairs are dotted around to sit on. It’s like being able to move a park bench to sit wherever you wish! Radio controlled boats buzz on the pond in front of the Palais du Luxembourg.

St Germain de Pres

Within walking distance is St Germain de Pres. The main square is named after de Beauvoir and Sartre in tribute to times they spent at nearby Cafe de Flore and Les Deux Magots.

Regrettably we didn’t have time to stop here as we were on a mission to visit Laduree!

La Rotonde, Montparnasse

La Rotonde, Boulevard Montparnasse lies below Simone de Beauvoir’s childhood flat. She used to hide there when playing truant from school!

On scarlet banquette seating, we enjoyed hustle and bustle through open windows onto the street. Despite enjoying our meal immensely, the happy memories are sadly eclipsed by us both being horribly ill during the following twelve hours. I will spare you the details but just say it was a huge pity to lose the middle day of our trip stuck in our hotel room.

Visiting Montparnasse Cemetery

Finally, in the Cimitiere Montparnasse we paid our respects at the joint grave of de Beauvoir and Sarte. Never married, not always partners in the sexual sense, they were soul mates until their twilight years. Simone outlived Sartre by around six years and was distraught by his absence. They were reunited when Simone died in 1986.

Also at Montparnasse, a decorated shrine around the grave of Serge Gainsbourg was as much a focus here as Jim Morrison’s grave is at Pere Lachaise. Tucked away against the outer walls close to the entrance, de Beauvoir and Sartre’s memorial is clearly visited by many with posies of flowers and lit candles but less of a spectacle.

Simone de Beauvoir – recommended reading

Simone de Beauvoir is best known for her feminist work The Second Sex however I preferred her novels and autobiographies. There also exists volumes of letters between herself and Sartre although I’ve not read these.

Having written my university thesis on Simone de Beauvoir I read most of her books 20 years ago but my recommended reading would be:
She Came to Stay – semi autobiographical novel based on Sartre and de Beauvoir’s love triangle with a female student.
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter and The Prime of Life – parts 1 and 2 of de Beauvoir’s 4 part autobiography.
The Woman Destroyed – a trilogy of novellas in one volume each exploring the lives of three middle aged women who find themselves in crisis for various reasons.
A Very Easy Death – a short volume about de Beauvoir’s experience caring for her dying mother.

If you’d like to read something with the same feel but less philosophical, I heartily recommend Suite Francais by Irene Nemirovsky, a fictitious account of several households of Parisians fleeing the city as the Nazis take control.

Maison Cupcake in Paris Part 1: Laduree
Maison Cupcake in Paris Part 3: (to follow) – The Paris of Amelie Poulain

December 17, 2013

Amelie’s Paris: from Canal St Martin to Montmarte

Sarah Trivuncic Places to visit Canal St Martin, Montmartre, Paris 0 Comments

This post was previously published at Maison Cupcake. This is the last of my three part series about last year’s spring trip to Paris. After viewing Paris through the eyes of Simone de Beauvoir last week, today it is the turn of Amelie’s Paris, Amelie Poulain as in Le Fableux Destin de Amelie Poulain – to give Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s film comedy its full title!

At the time of filming, the Canal St Martin in north east Paris was a fairly dingy area however it’s now smarter and artier a la Portobello or Hoxton.

French canals are over twice the width of those in the UK and the banks were lined with office workers eating their lunch in the leafy surroundings. Barge trips sail up and down although there is a tunnel close to where this photo was taken preventing them going any further south.

The Metro features frequently in Amelie. There are many differences between the Paris Metro and London’s Underground; stations are closer together and often only just below the surface (like the Circle Line); platforms face each other rather than having their backs to each other meaning you can see people on the platforms opposite and it’s less closed in.

The passageways of the Metro are echoey and like Amelie, you often hear music from buskers coming from far away.

We took the metro from Canal St Martin to below Sacre Coeur; scene in the film where Amelie arranges to meet Nino but only communicates with him via public telephone boxes.

A funicular railway transports you from this level to the top where it’s a short walk to Montmarte.

Montmartre is like a village on a hill. It feels separate from Paris yet is quintessentially Parisian at the same time. On such a sunny day, lighting was very harsh to take pictures from our cafe and I must confess I was wilting somewhat in 27c heat. (I would be hopeless anywhere hotter).

I had hoped to walk to the Moulin Rouge or better still, photograph it at night but alas, with sore feet we consoled ourselves with this windmill, one of several which used to dot the Montmartre hill.

This Amelie pilgrimage was impromptu, hence I had not researched where the famous bar was located. This grocery store however featured prominently in the film and even displays an Amelie poster on the corner!

Small pleasures in life are a recurring theme in Amelie, the crack of caramel on a brulee, plunging a hand into a sack of lentils.

Our small pleasure in Montmartre was watching crepes being cooked on this iron.

I’m struggling to think of an equivalent fast food in the UK which would be served with liqueur such as Grand Marnier. Ideas welcome below…

Un fableux ice cream parlour!

Having walked from Montparnasse to Montmarte with only a brief 4 stop hop on the Metro, we crawled down Montmarte to our final Amelie moment of the day.

Abbesses Metro station is one of only a few retaining its original Art Nouveau canopy. It’s also the station to which Amelie escorts the blind man in the film. Being built into the side of the hill, it’s a rarity in Paris that you have to descend deep to the platform.

Never had I been so glad to sit down! Exploring cities in hot weather is thirsty work.

Maison Cupcake in Paris Part One: Laduree
Maison Cupcake in Paris Part Two: La Coupole and La Rotonde

December 17, 2013

Siblu: Les Pierres Couchees holiday review

Sarah Trivuncic Where to stay Mobile homes, Siblu, St Brevin les Pins 0 Comments

This post was previously published at MaisonCupcake.com. How better to take your mind for impending snow and bad weather by planning a summer holiday? Take some inspiration from Siblu holiday taken last summer.

It is – in case you haven’t noticed – cold. We’re due to get snow storms this weekend in the UK and I just want to hunker down and keep warm under the temperate rises again.

Now that Christmas is out of the way, it’s time to start planning for holidays again. As you may previously have gathered, we are France addicts. We can’t get enough of the place – I have a French travel blog in the pipeline where I can chatter about holidays in France without boring all the people who come here for cake. (more…)

December 17, 2013

Breakfast at Brittany’s – the morning ferry to Caen

Sarah Trivuncic Getting there Brittany Ferries, ferries 0 Comments

This post was previously published at MaisonCupcake.com. Now Christmas is over I’m starting to think about summer holidays – there is an offer at the bottom of this post for 10% of French holidays with Siblu.

We could have gone for Le Full English but with another meal time due before the end of the crossing, bread and pastries were the order of the morning during our Brittany Ferries journey from Portsmouth to Caen.

Our family are seasoned travellers across the channel, we’ve done nearly every route and transportation means but Brittany Ferries’ longer mid channel crossings are our favourites. (more…)

January 14, 2013

Brittany Ferries Portsmouth to Caen Day Crossing

Sarah Trivuncic French Travel channel crossings, old travel 0 Comments

About our Brittany Ferries Portsmouth to Caen day crossing – a companion piece to Brittany Ferries St Malo Night Crossing.

Our family are seasoned travellers across the channel, we’ve done nearly every route and transportation means but Brittany Ferries’ longer mid channel crossings are our favourites.

Previously we’ve done Brittany Ferries Night Crossings, sleeping in cabins and arriving at St Malo the next morning. For this trip we had slept in a hotel outside Portsmouth and boarded “Normandie” before 8am.

We were en route to Siblu St Brevin les Pins; after the six hour crossing we had a further 3-4 hours drive to reach our mobile home accommodation.

You might think cabins are just for sleeping in but I swear by booking one during the day. They’re half the price they would be for overnight crossings and having somewhere to put your bags down with private bathroom is invaluable. We didn’t spend much time in ours on the way there although my dad had a 2 hour snooze on the way home.

St Malo crossing cabins include a television although for Caen crossings the basic cabins only have radios. Never mind, on this occasion we at least had a window.

There’s an entertainment schedule pinned up on a board, during the daytime crossings it’s mostly focussed at kids with someone dressed up in a bear costume, clowns making animals out of balloons, that type of thing.

The best thing about Brittany Ferries for kids is the soft play area and drawing tables. Ted drew this fabulous picture of the boat. In the restaurant kids get gift boxes with plastic toys supposedly to pass the time – although amusingly they’re generally unsuitable for use in a confined space i.e. plastic dart board, water pistols.

Restaurant options onboard include a snack bar selling pizza and sandwiches, a self service restaurant with hot meals and salads. There’s also a more upmarket buffet restaurant with table service although we’ve not tried that out yet as it’s over 25 euros at head and frankly the food is good enough in the self service one that I don’t see the point in paying this much.

The length of the crossing gives you a chance to relax and genuinely makes the journey part of the holiday. The time passes very quickly and you cut down on a lot of driving. Customer service onboard is excellent with friendly staff in the resturants and shops (mostly French). Both sterling and euros are accepted onboard however sterling works out significantly cheaper.

Best of all, when you get off at the other end, you don’t need to hire a car!

We travelled as guests of Siblu holiday parcs and Brittany Ferries. Read my review of Siblu at Les Pierres Couchees here.

Originally published on Maison Cupcake

July 24, 2010

Brittany Ferries Saint Malo night crossing

Sarah Trivuncic French Travel channel crossings, france 0 Comments

“Postcard from” is my occasional series of weekend non-recipe posts. This postcard comes from my recent experience travelling on the overnight ferry to France.

For peak holiday times, you have to book very early to get a cabin on the overnight crossing from Portsmouth to St Malo. It’s not cheap but when you consider how pricey a Dover Calais crossing can be during school holidays (£90 each way sometimes) and bear in mind the extra petrol costs, motorway tolls and an extra night staying in a hotel to break up your journey, actually the £200 extra you are likely to pay for the longer crossing becomes more tempting.

We’ve previously travelled on the overnight ferry from Portsmouth to Cherbourg. Big mistake. Driving down the Cherbourg peninsula is like going from Dover to Birmingham without motorways. It’s a long, dull drive. Plus you’ve only had four hours sleep on a six hour crossing (they wake you up at 5am British time, an hour before you get into port at 7am French time).

However the Portsmouth to St Malo crossing is around ten hours and arrives in port at 8am French time so you get more sleep and do less driving. It’s a win win situation, especially if you have a toddler who doesn’t like sitting in the back of a car for more than two hours at a time (less if hungry).

So with much excitement we boarded Brittany Ferries’ Bretagne en route to L’Ile de Re which would be four hours further drive from St Malo the next morning.

There are a few sights to see on the way out of Portsmouth…. HMS Victory got my dad rather excited.

The Spinnaker Tower and harbour side bars

I dislike planes and avoid flying. Truth is though, I’m not wild about ferries either. I guess I like my feet on the ground. Walking along decks like the one shown above and I have scenes from Titanic with Kate Winslet debating numbers of lifeboats running through my head.

“We don’t need a window” I told my husband.

“But Teddy could have looked out of it at the sea.”

“It’s cheaper to not have a window and we will be asleep when we’re in the cabin anyway.”

I hadn’t bargained for this. Rooms without views are not confined to the inner corridor of the upper decks where we’d stayed last time. They put you down there. As in, under the cars down in the hull of the boat. I didn’t even know that was possible. All cabins were sold out so we were down in third class.

The food lifted my spirits, I had one of these salads.

The desserts looked very tempting too.

My husband had fish and chips which admittedly looks like the meal from the Secret Nuclear Bunker post.

The photo of the chocolate-mousse-to-die-for is rubbish. Imagine though if you will, that scene in Pulp Fiction where John Travolta tells Samuel L Jackson that “it’s the little things” that make Europe special i.e. the glass of cold beer in the cinema, mayonnaise on the fries etc. Well the little thing that I thought made these chocolate mousses special was that they were served in china ramekins. A totally unnecessary touch since they were in plastic pots as well but it’s these details that make eating on a French ferry company more special than the service station service you get from the British equivalents.

Off to bed.

“It’s rather nice” said my father, impressed it had a telly.

“It’s like a mausoleum, ” I replied.

The bathroom was predictably tiny but serviceable. It reminded me of the scene on the train in Sex and the City where Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall are travelling with Amtrak to LA and have a toilet situated underneath their shower.

So down in the bowels of the ship how did I sleep? Not very well. How much this was to do with feeling like I was in K19: The Widowmaker and how much to do with fretting that Ted would roll out of bed I’m not sure. It was extremely dark in there as well and there were loud noises. I was mentally calculating how far away we were from water and visualising the murkiness out there.

I wanted to go and pace the decks upstairs in my slippers, even if it meant dashing down a corridor that looked like another scene from Titanic, the one where Leonardo has been chained with handcuffs to a pipe and Kate dashes off to get help. But I couldn’t as my husband and father were on the top bunks and there was only I to stop Ted rolling out.

Which he did, with a loud thud, head first at 4.30am. None of us went back to sleep after that.

We will be travelling with Brittany Ferries again this summer, but not overnight. If I were travelling Portsmouth to St Malo again, I would make certain I had a room with a view as that was I could be sure it was above the waterline.

Originally published on Maison Cupcake

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