France: P'tits Pains et Gourmandises

The evening before our day trip to Versailles, we came up with a brilliant idea: picnic in the palace gardens.  C'mon.  How brilliant is that?

We bought some of the provisions at a convenience store the night before, but we saved the bread for the day of.  Bright and early in the morning, we stopped by the boulanger we scoped out previously:

Walking into P'tits Pains et Gourmandises, we were amazed at the array of baked goods:

After we surreptitiously made our selections, my sister bravely stepped forward and asked the nice lady behind the counter to "donnez moi un croissant et un pain au chocolat, s'il vous plait":

Croissants just taste different in France.  They're more buttery.  More flaky.  More heavenly.  More everything lovely in the world.  The pain au chocolat was divine as well.

We gobbled these two up before we even reached Versailles.

We also got a baguette, which we unfortunately had to rip up to be able to fit it into my sister's tote:

Our picnic didn't exactly turn out the way we thought it would.  Instead of sitting on the lush lawns of the Palace of Versailles, we huddled on a stone bench and stuffed our faces as quickly as we could to beat the coming rain.

Here's what our spread looked like:

Don't scoff at convenience store pate.  It's awesome.  (Or in the words of T, it's "bomb.com.")

The Palace of Versailles was cool, but not quite as memorable as that first bite of croissant.  We went back to P'tits Pains et Gourmandises a few more times to get more croissants.  We went from sharing two between the four of us to each clamoring for our own.  Baguette and convenience store pate also became our go-to meal on the go/convenient breakfast choice.

I still dream about those croissants.


P'tits Pains et Gourmandises
132 Boulevard de Magenta
75010 Paris, France   
+33 01 48 78 67 85