Reliving Fontainebleau

Fonty holds a special place for us. We started our first home here; we experienced our first long-term stay outside Singapore here; and this was a place where we made mutual friends together as a couple. Almost every Fonty sight holds something significant that we share. The stars at night, the boulangerie, the marche, the pressing of the "pieton" button to cross to INSEAD from our home - it is hard to describe how we felt coming back to Fonty again, after more than a year.



On March 2004, Louis visited the small town of Fonty in anticipation of our arrival here in Fall. Louis had then checked out a few places for housing. In what turned out to be one of the best decisions he has made, Louis quickly settled on an apartment that was later to become our home and the starting point for many great friendships. It was also the genesis of Eve's love for cooking (Baby, now u know where Mummy acquired her culinary skills from :)). Today, on 29 December 2006, nothing much has changed with Le Parc Royal (see 2004 picture on the left and today's pictures - Picture 5 - in the slide show below). In fact, nothing much has changed in Fonty.

Sure, there are new shops. And INSEAD has grown a little. But everything else remains the same. Still dog poo on the ground. Still the same bus-stop with one advertisement in front of Rue Royale. Still the same Les Halles selling the freshest fruit. Even the jogging trail looks and feels the same. The ground is as soft as I remember it. It turns where it is supposed to turn. There is still the low-hanging branch at the halfway point. And the routes that were dark at 5pm in December of 2004 were still dark this evening. At 5pm, when I ran past the kid nursery along the jogging trail, I again saw parents picking their kids up from school. It was heart-warming to know that some things don't change.

While I was out snapping pictures on the way to the jogging trail, Eve was out exploring her favourite Fonty spots. When I came back, she had bought a chausson aux pommes (apple turnover) from the boulangerie next to Ibis. She was also eating lychees and clementines that she had just picked up from Les Halles Bellefontaine. If we had a kitchenette here in the Ibis, she would have probably picked up a parcel of paleron de beouf (cut of beef for stewing) from the butcherie as well.

For dinner, we picked up our favourite paella, salad and fruits from Carrefour. Eve and I noticed that the chef had swapped the chicken thigh with chicken drumlets(which were probably not cooked togther with the paella), but other than that, the paella remained just as good as we remembered it. And yes, we actually finished the whole packet of salad and the can of corn that you see in the pics. In all, this was probably our best meal in France so far. So, after one year in France, our best meal on this return trip is a meal from Carrefour. Not bad at all.