Kouign Aman

Carnac is a beach town on the southern coast of Bretagne – and considering that’s now August, when 99% of the French go on vacation, it’s got a carnival atmosphere. The streets and beaches are jam packed, and so far it’s been the hardest city to cover hotels in. Hoteliers are swamped, and have been giving me attitude about my taking up their time.

Aside from the beaches, Carnac is also famous for its megaliths – stone henge-like rock arrangements, except there are over 4,000 of them, set up in long rows. They’re fenced off in the summer to protect them, too much foot traffic in past years has eroded the soil away. An inability to navigate the public transportation here (due to in equally to lack of planning on my part, and badly explained bus systems on theirs) has lead to a lot of walking. And after you’ve seen 20 minutes of megaliths, that’s pretty much good. Again, my stone age and archeological French vocabulary is also lacking.

The 2000 Guinness World record holder for number of ice cream flavors is also here. Igloo, as the shop is called, has 180 flavors and to come up that many, they really had to dig deep. Cucumber ice cream, gin ice cream, popcorn ice cream. The whiskey ice cream wasn’t bad. It takes about 15 minutes to order, because simply looking at the flavors takes that long.

There’s also a boulangerie with excellent kouign aman. It’s essentially the evil cousin of the croissant. It’s equally flaky and buttery, but denser and baked with sugar on top that melts in to sticky coating. I’ve developed a complete dependence on carbohydrates in the morning. And throughout the day. It’s not going to be pretty when I go off the pastry diet. Until then, you only live once, right? Plus, it’s for research purposes. I’m all for restraint, except in cases like this, and most other cases for that matter…