Madeline

It does get better!
There’s a Metro stop that coincides with a district called Madeline. If you like food in any way, shape or form, this is the place to visit. Foodie heaven.
We first went to a place called Fauchon that puts Dean and Deluca to shame.
Shame shame on you Dean and Deluca! And not just because you don’t have the Egg Cream outside of New York!
Well, I shouldn’t be too harsh, after all they’re not in the Madeline district. But they ARE from New York which food wise, is the closest thing. They should be able to compete…
But there’s NO WAY they can! I mean, I gained about 5 pounds just looking at all the food they had there! Custom chocolates, cookies and the like. All kinds of jam and spreads. Spices and coffee galore! And that’s just the main floor. They have wine and related stuff downstairs and really fancy teas and a tea room upstairs.
Since I possibly couldn’t bring back everything I wanted to, I settled on a small jar of Vanilla Milk (?) Jam and a small Strawberry Jam. I think that one is going as omayage for Yumi-chan on Monday.
Then we went next door to the Chocolate shop!!! The chocolate was really good, we met a gent from Oregon who is out here with his niece on an exchange program who shops here all the time. He gave us a lot of tips about the chocolate and because he was a regular, the owner(?) knew exactly what to get for him.
And she is used to people having the reaction to her shop that the three of us had (utter amazement and shock). After we bought a lot of stuff there, she gave each of us a 1 Euro chocolate coin.
That was sooo cool. I felt like I was 6 again.
That whole chocolate search was for a mythical chocolate shop that is made with 70% less sugar than typical fine chocolate and is supposed to be excellent. Andrew’s not a big sweets person so Ellen and I were leading the charge for this one.
heh.