Italy

Streets of Venice

After a short and easy week, we had a five day weekend ahead of us do to some French Holidays. For this long weekend, we are going to Italy. We left late Friday afternoon to catch a train to Lyon Part Dieu. From there we took a tram to the airport. Our flight did not leave until six in the morning on Saturday, but we could not get there any earlier. So we hung out all night in the airport. We played card games and read books all night with a few hours of sleep in between.

We arrive to Venice very early Saturday morning. It was only an hour and five minute flight. Before we left the airport, we bought public transportation passes. This pass was good for 24 hrs on either the bus or the water taxi. From the airport Marco Polo we took a bus to the water taxi area. From there we took a boat to The Piazza San Marco, which is the main square. The water taxi was just like metro but of course it was all done on a boat.

Gondola Ride

After walking around, and shopping, we decided to take a gondola ride. This was very cool. We got to see the rest of the city by a boat. We went under bridges and many narrow streets. We saw some amazing buildings. Using a boat is the main transportation in Venice. All of the houses on the water have two doors. One in the front and one near the water.

After the gondola ride, we went to Murano. This part of the city is known for their glass blowing. All of the stores in that area specialized in glass blowing. It was very neat to see all of it especially watching the people blow glass.

After a great and successful day in Venice, we packed up and were heading to Verona on Sunday!

Romeo And Juliet Balcony

We left early Sunday morning to head to Verona! We walked over to the train station, which was a very short walk from our hotel and took the train to Verona. The train ride was only one hour long.

Once we arrive in Verona, we took a bus to the area where our bed and breakfast hotel was. It took us over an hour to find the hotel. We were in the right area, but we just could not seem to find it. After walking around aimlessly, we final found our bed and breakfast. We checked in and dropped off our bags. The bed and breakfast was in an apartment complex. The only sign it had was on the door which you would never know trying to find it, since you had to get buzzed in.

Good luck Juliet Statue

Vineyards

As soon as we were done checking in, we walked to the center of the city. It was about a 15 minute walk. We walked and shopped around all morning. We saw the arena along with the Romeo and Juliet balcony. This was very cool. There was also a statue of Juliet half naked. She was covering up one of her breast. It is known that if you touch her left breast, it will bring you good luck, so we did just that!

Winery

After seeing Romeo and Juliet, we went and did a vineyard tour and a wine tasting. We were picked up at 2:30pm and we got a tour of Verona along with many vineyards. We stopped a couple of times along the way to the winery to see the vineyards. It was very cool, we were in wine country!

The winery we visited was a local family owned winery. This winery was considered a medium size company which sells and produces anywhere between 40,000 and 50,000 bottles a wine each year. The winery was in their house and in their cellar. It was very neat. We got to taste 6 different types of wines. They were all red wines and included Valpolicella Classico, Valpolicella Classico Superiore, Valpolicella Ripasso Classico Superiore, Carpane, Amarone Classico della Valpolicella, and Recioto della Valpolicella. My two favorite were Valpolicella Classico Superiore, and Recioto della Valpolicella.

Wine Tasting!

When the tour was over, we finish walking around the city and got some gelato! We headed back to our bed and breakfast to relax and prepare for our trip to Rome the next day!

Trevi Foundation

Our next stop in Italy was Rome! Again, we left early Monday morning and took a train from Verona to Rome. This Train was about three hours long. Since the train stations was a little bit further from our hotel the guy who ran the bed and breakfast, gave us a ride to the train station free of charge. He was very nice and he gave us kisses on each cheek.

It was the same deal for when we arrived in Rome. Once we left the train station, we found our hotel. Our hotel this time was very easy to find and took us about ten minutes walking to it. We did not get lost, and unlike the bed and breakfast this one had a name on the buzzer to let us in. Chelsea and I stayed in a room that was shared with four others. It was mixed with both guys and girls. This was an experience.

Vatican City

Our first stop in Rome was Vatican City. Vatican City was absolutely amazing. We saw the church and went inside of it. It was beautiful! Since the line to get inside was so long, we just merged ourselves up near the front before security. The line was moving fast. We wanted to go in the museum, but the line was even longer it was about a three hour wait. We knew if we did that we would not be able to see anything else in Rome since we were there for only a day.

Trevi Foundation

After visiting Vatican City, our next stop was the Trevi Foundation. This is another tourist spot and another spectacular view. We took pictures in front of it and threw a coin in for good luck.

Our next stop was the Coliseum. We waited in line and went inside. It was so cool inside, and finally we visited the spanish steps to finsih off our day.

 

Coliseum

Coliseum

For dinner we each got a pie of pizza!

 

Spanish Steps

View from Spanish Steps

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day, we got up early once more to catch a train to Milan which will be our finally stop in Italy before we return back to France. 

Like the other three cities, the first thing we did was find our hotel and drop our bags off.  We spent the day in Milan shopping and seeing some monuments like the Milan Cathedral. We spent a day in MIlanin order to catch a train to go back to France. Even know we were not sure what there was to see and do in Milan, we still saw a lot and had a great day in the beautiful city of Milan.  

Milan Cathedral

The next day we got up early and spent all day on  multiple trains to get back to France.

Italy has been an amazing experience. There were so many things to see and do! I hope one day, I will be able to go back to share this same experience with my family. However, the best thing about Italy was all the pizza, pasta, and the 14 scoops of gelato I got to eat, but hey who’s counting right?!

The next two days will be the last days in Yssingeaux and my internship at ENSP. I will have a Salé class which is a class that will prepare food for our graduation ceremony that is held on Friday.

Finally, on Saturday I will be reunited with my twin sister and my mother in Paris where I will be spending my final week in Europe.

 

See you at Graduation!!!

Confisserie

This week was a very short week for Confisserie. We only had two days of this class which were held on Thursday and Friday. Our chef for this class was Chef Regis again. Even though we had a short week of class we still made a lot of products and ended up still having a buffet on Friday evening.

Guimauve aux Fruits

Confisserie is all about making candy. We made many different types of candy for the short amount of time we had. We made Pralines Rouges, Guimauve aux Fruits, Nougat de Montelimar, Caramel Mou aux Fruits, Sucettes Assorties, Pate de Fruits, and Gelees Bi-Couche.

Praline Rouges

One of my favorite candies we made was the Pralines Rouges. For this candy, we took a roasted nut like an almond or hazelnut and coated it in sugar several times. Another was Sucettes Assorties, which are Lolli pops.

 

At the beginning of the week, it was very laid back. On Monday we had a field trip to Sevarome. This was a factory on all of the different flavors that are used when baking. This factory was actually right here in the town of Yssingeaux. This meant that it was a quick drive. 

We found out on Tuesday that we would not be having class, because they could not get a Chef to do a demo for us. So, Chelsea and I decided to Adventure off to Lyon again. While we were in Lyon, we finally found the giant OnlyLyon Sign. Later that day, we went to the Lyon Part-Dieu mall which was right around the corner from the train station. We spent the rest of our time there. This mall was huge!

On Wednesday, we had another day off because it was a National Bank Holiday in France. I spent this day catching up and packing all of my stuff for Italy and for my return home.

Friday after class, Chelsea and I left to start our Journey to Italy for our five day weekend due to more Bank Holidays. We will be visiting Venice, Verona, Rome, and Milan!

Paris Round 2

We found it!

This weekend we tackled Paris again. It was the same drill. We left early Saturday morning and caught a train to Lyon Part Dieu where we took the TGV to Paris! As soon as we arrived we went down to the metro and took it to our hotel. We had no issues this time as we knew what we were doing and how the metro works from our last visit. It was very simple.

During our first day in Paris, we went shopping to different areas where we have not been to before. Our main focus was baking supplies. Before we hit up those stores, we went to Rue Cler. This street had many different bakeries and neat shops on it. After that we spent most of our afternoon going into baking supply stores and looking for the best deals.

We went into three stores. The first one we stopped into was Déco Relief, followed by Mora, and then E.Dehillerin. All three of these stores were amazing. I was in heaven. It had everything a baker could possible want. E.Dehillerin was an amazing store. It was over one hundred years old and has not been updated. It had a factory feel and smell to it. Everything was in wood shelves and the aisles were very small. This store was also the store Julia Childs shopped at and bought copper pans. From this store I picked up some bowl scrapers that had the name and address of the store on it. In Mora, I picked up some supplies to make entremets, like the entremet rings. Finally at deco relief I got a rubber mold, and praline. The molds were so cheap. They were only seven Euros each! I can't wait to start using everything and baking at home! Any tasters?!

Inside E. Dehillerin

The Louvre

On Sunday, we woke up early to see if we could tour the Eiffel Tower. When we got there the line was crazy at every ticket entrance, so we decided to head to the Louvre and wait in line there, since we have not been there before. Once we arrived at the Louvre, we got in for free since we were students. We walked around and saw all the Greek Gods, Roman Gods, and Egyptians just to name a few. We also saw Aphrodite the most beautiful woman and we saw the Mona Lisa.

The Mona Lisa was amazing. There were so many people trying to take pictures of it. It was crazy. However, Chelsea and I pushed our way through the massive crowd and got pictures of the Mona Lisa. We even got in front of it as well. As soon as we got our pictures we squeezed our way out of the crowd.

Hot Chocolate

After the Louvre, we got lunch and headed to Un Dimanche À Paris where we went to the hot chocolate bar and got drinks. It was so good. I just got hot chocolate where as Chelsea got a tiramisu rum hot chocolate. Next time I go back with my mom and Sarah I want to try their brownie rum hot chocolate.

Our final stop in Paris, before we left to head back to Yssingeaux was Pierre Herme. This is another very famous bakery like Ludree. This will be my last time in Paris before my mom and sister come up on May 11. I am so excited to be spending another week in Paris with them!

Coming back from Paris was another adventure in itself. Once again our train was delayed. Once we final got to Retournac, Ann Marie and a taxi was bringing the nine of us home. Five of us went with Ann Marie. As we were driving home, she heard a strange noise coming from the back of her car. She pulled over just to find out, that she had a flat tire. Ann Marie and Joe changed the tire while we all waited outside in the freezing cold rain at midnight.

This coming week will be a very easy week. Monday we have a field trip, Tuesday and Wednesday we have a day off since it is a French holiday and we will end the week with confectionary on Thursday and Friday. I am also leaving on Friday for Italy for our five day weekend!

Chocolat

This week was all about chocolate. I had a new chef this week as well, who I really enjoyed, even though he was sometimes hard to understand. His name was Chef Regis. During the week, we worked on making many different chocolate sculptures.

We made some small and easy chocolate sculptures, like ladybugs, caterpillers, and strawberries to bigger and more difficult sculptures. These included two artistic pieces and a character that we got to choose what it was doing.

 

During the first two days, we tempered chocolate and made some simple pieces. We started off with chocolate lady bugs and strawberries.

From there we worked on making pieces for our character, an angry bird pig, and our two artistic pieces. All of these chocolate sculptures were made by molding chocolate and sticking the pieces together.

Angry Bird Pig

 

Artistic Piece #1

For my character, I made a soccer player which was going to be me. My character was coming out great until the very end, when it was being sprayed. When it was being sprayed it fell over and a couple pieces fell off. Chef tried to fix it, but with the sun setting and shining in the classroom, it was melting the chocolate and not sticking. It was coming out great until then, but that's okay. Chelsea's character also had the same issue as me along with another girl from our table. We laughed it off and joked around about our pieces breaking to make it seem like it was okay.

Artisitc Piece #2

The next two days went better then the second day. We did not have any more broken chocolate sculptures to any of our artistic pieces. We had a buffet on Thursday as well to show off all of our chocolate pieces.

On Friday we had our final exam/final entremet project that we have been working and perfection the last couple of weeks. Mine came out great, and I am so glad we are done with it.

Our entire group and our entremets

My Entremet

This weekend I am back off to Paris for round 2!!!

Geneva, Switzerland

This weekend, we went to Geneva, Switzerland. We left early Saturday morning and caught a train to Lyon. We were originally going to spend the day in Lyon and leave later that day because we could not find any trains earlier. However, while at the Lyon train station I had to buy tickets to London, for when my mom and sister come up. While I was doing that, the other girls in our group were trying to purchase tickets to Geneva and found an earlier train. So we took that and we got to Geneva by 12:30 in the afternoon.

Giant Broken Chair

We spent our first half a day in Geneva by shopping and exploring the old town streets. We went in the very well known department store called Manor. This store had six floors and had everything you could possible want. It even had a supermarket on the bottom floor and a restaurant all the way at the top, which we ate at for lunch. This restaurant was more of a self serve buffet a la carte style restaurant. It was pretty good. We also went in many stores that Switzerland is known for, like swatches, and the Swiss knives.

Later that night, we adventures off to find our hotel. We booked our hotel in France, since Geneva was so close to the broader. From the center of the town, we had to take a Tram right to the boarder of France and Switzerland. From there we had to cross the border and walk to our hotel. The walk wasn't long; it was about a 15 minute walk. 

 The next day, we got up early and walked back to Switzerland and took the tram to some tourist attractions. We went and saw the giant broken chair, and the united nation building. It was so neat to see all of the flags hung that are part of the same nation.

United Nations

Jardin Botanique

From there we walked to Jardin Botanique. This was a very peaceful garden park. We took many pictures of the Beautiful flowers.
 
Our next stop was too the flower clock. We walked along side Lake Geneve until we came across the flagged bridge that we had to cross. Unfortunately the bridge had no flags on it. While walking we got to see the giant waterfall and Mount Blanc in the horizon. This is one ski area in Switzerland. We soon found the flower clock. This was a giant clock made all out of flowers. It was pretty cool, especially since Switzerland is known for watches.

Flower Clcok

After a very successful morning, we got lunch and took an afternoon train back to France. Our train left at 3:30 and was going directly to Lyon. It had a few stops in between. When we got close to Lyon, we had to stop and turn around because there was a fire on the tracks. This two hour train ride turned in a six hour train ride. Luckily for us someone who sat next to us was translating everything in English for us and was showing us a map, on how far we were away from Lyon. This guy was so nice. He even gave us chocolates. After waiting hours on the train, we soon learned that the station Lyon Part Dieu had no power. We had to go to another station nearby called Lyon Perrache. Our train was not permitted to go to this station. So, we had to switch trains. The guy who sat with us told us what was happening and asked if we would like to follow him to the other train. He waited and sat with us again until we arrived at the station. Since he knew where we were trying to get to, he took us there. We had to take the Metro to Lyon Part Dieu the original station we were trying to get to. He took us there and paid for our tickets because we had no coins and our cards did not work. Once we arrived at the station all of the trains were late and our connecting train was not on the big screen. We all went to the ticket counter which was crazy, and found our train on the smaller screens. It was 25 minutes late and we made the train. While going through this crazy adventure we were talking to this nice guy, who gave up his time to help us out. We learned a little bit about him as he learned a little bit about us. Half way through our adventure we learned his name and he learned our names. His name was Marc. He took us right up to the train and we said our goodbyes and Thank-yous. Five minutes later our train still had not moved and Marc came back on the train to give us his e-mail. He was such a great guy! Marc if you are reading this THANK-YOU again!

After a crazy adventure coming home, and making all of our trains, Switzerland was fun, even though it was only a short amount of time I got to spend there.

Lake Geneve

This coming week is all about chocolate! We will also be watching our French videos we made on Tuesday. This should be interesting.

Glaces

M first week in PM classes was Glaces. This class was all about ice cream! Instead of waking up at five in the morning, I got to sleep in and go to class at one in the afternoon. Class got out at eight in the evening. If we were lucky and got everything done, we got out of class a little bit earlier.  Not only was this my first afternoon/evening class ever, but I also had a new chef this week as well. His name was Chef Pierre. I only have him for this one class, and he was very nice. He sometimes was hard to understand with his French Accent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glaces class was only a three day class. On Monday we had a trail day for making our entremet, for our project. This day was used to ask the chef any last minute questions and to start perfection our entremets before the real thing. On Friday was our mock day. We treated Friday as if it was the real thing and couldn’t ask the chef any questions.

Mock Trail Entremet

In Glaces, we made a lot of different ice creams to make many different desserts. For ice cream desserts, we made Ananas Givre, Granite aux fruits exotiques (granite), Vacherin vanille/fraise, Omelette norvegienne praline/chocolat, Nougat glace moderne, Macarons pistache/the vert, Verrine Mojito, and a Tarte glacee Caramel/fraise. 

Ananas Givre

An Ananas Givre is a frosted pineapple. The pineapple is cut up and filled with pineapple sorbet and then put back together in the shape of the Pineapple.

Vacherin Vanille/Fraise

 

 

 A vacherin vanille/fraise is a vanilla/strawberry ice cream entremet. This entremet had baked Swiss meringue for the base and was decorated with the meringue as well along with Chantilly cream. Inside the entremet were layers of vanilla and strawberry ice cream.  

Omelette Norvegienne

One of my favorites was the Omelette Norvegienne. This is known as baked Alaska. Inside of the baked Alaska was chocolate ice cream and praline ice cream. Both of these were among my favorite ice creams we made in class. For a base, the baked Alaska had a financier sponge, and it was topped with a chocolate Italian meringue. 

The Nougat Glace Moderne, is made with a frozen nougat, Pistachio dacquoise, and raspberry sorbet topped with a neutral glaze and macaroons.

 

Nougat Glace Moderne

Another dessert we made was the Macarons pistache/ the vert. This is a giant macaroon sandwich filled with pistachio and green tea ice cream.  

Macaron Pistache/the vert

Verrine Mojito

 

 

The verrine Mojito is a mojito filled in a glass with a rum mousse, a lime crumble, and a lime/mint sorbet.  

 

 

 

 

Finally, we have a tart Glacee Caramel Fraise. This is a caramel/strawberry ice cream, a strawberry coulis all filled on top of crunchy short bread.

Tart Glacee Caramel Fraise

 This weekend I will be traveling to Geneva, Switzerland!!! See you when I get back!

The Buffet