Update 2- The Town. This is the second part of a series about the time I studied pastry arts in France.Â
Link to update 1: The School- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/188580827531
L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Pâtisserie is in Yssingeaux, France, a picturesque small French village nested in the Rhône-Alpes region on the southside of France. Geographically, the town is located in the « pays des sucs », an area grown over volcanic residue and it also has a warm climate so rains quite a bit, so in the summer (when we were there) everything was gorgeously green and full of life which added to the magic of our time there. When we didn’t have class or planned activities we got to explore the town and surrounding area to our hearts desire and given how gorgeous and peaceful it was as well as having amazing weather while we were there I took full advantage of this. This is the town where I got to develop relationships with my classmates and others from the school, practice my French, meet friendly people, walk for hours on end, shop for memorable items for myself and others, go to my first French farmer’s market, reflect on my time in this amazing place… this is the town I called home for my time in France.
The school itself didn’t make it into the pictures of my last blog post, so I added one here. It’s a castle! I lived and went to class here!
The coat of arms for Yssingeaux is a blue shield with roosters. They were crazy about roosters there.
One of my favorite parts of the trip was that we had this amazing little park just behind the school. It was a set on a large hill and had amazing views of the surrounding area, I could do a whole blog post on just the park, but narrowed it down a couple of my favorite pictures.
Within several days, my friend and I found out that there was an entire store dedicated to selling beer on the other side of town, so as soon as we were able we made our way over there to shop their amazing selection. While shopping a rainstorm came in so we also checked out their bar while we waited for it to pass.
One of my favorite outings was going to a little bowling alley with some classmates. None of us are great at bowling, but it was a good bonding experience and the alley itself had a neat little arcade with some weird french games.
Our main group hangout spot was a little bar in the middle of town. This is the place we got to spend quality time getting to learn about each other and got to go out with one of the chefs who made some amazing meals for us as part of our school program. Some of the barkeeps were friendly and spoke little english, so I got to practice my french with them and try to order for people.
Outside of hanging out with people I went on some long walks around the entire town. I still can’t get over how gorgeous that town was, is.
