austin_dern (austin_dern) wrote,
austin_dern
austin_dern

And even though the sun was out

There's several places to eat in Parc Festyland. One's called Le Louisiane, decorated in a Riverboat Casino-ish Style and offering among other things New York Hot Dogs. It was closed, at least that we noticed. For lunch we went to La Creperie, which looked to offer cafeteria-style lunches from which we guessed we could get something vegetarian. We started off with pieces of French bread and cheese and then noticed they had fries. They had more substantial meals, too, chicken and beef pasta dishes and the like. They also sold wine. We're barely accustomed to beers being available at Cedar Point and Michigan's Adventure. Also, the experience softened bunny_hugger towards mayonnaise on fries. I've liked that pretty much since I discovered I couldn't have tartar sauce on my fries all the time for some reason. She's ... fonder of it now, at least with the slightly different mayonaise that gets sold in Europe.

The restaurant had an outdoor seating area; we didn't take it. I'd mentioned in passing the day was cool and rainy. We had lunch through a rainy patch that we hoped would get the water out of the clouds, at least through to closing. We wouldn't be so lucky. But the seat gave us a good view of the fishoplane, as well as a great number of black-and-white photos of French seaside amusements. The photos were nearly all off level. I admit it made me think of bunny_hugger's father coming in and straightening out every one of dozens of pictures. I was tempted to straighten some myself. It also made us realize we couldn't think of any French amusement parks or piers that were similar to Cedar Point or Coney Island or Blackpool. Surely there were amusement parks from the late 19th century and mustn't at least some of them have survived the troublesome 20th century? Surely, but we didn't know of them. Coaster-Count.com lists 75 French parks, essentially the same number as the United Kingdom (79); what're we missing?

Later in the day, to warm up, we'd stop at La Table D'Odin and isn't that a great name, to get coffee and hot chocolate. The coffee was a tiny one, espresso-style, with sugar available but not cream or milk. bunny_hugger was just getting used to. The conference gave coffee like that too.

We were a tiny bit disappointed there didn't seem to be any exotic local candy bars at the park, or for that matter anywhere in France. They had some British candies, but we were familiar enough with those. The souvenir stores would also be a touch disappointing, though also a touch odd. While we'd find a good stuffed doll of Festy, the dinosaur-or-dragon in a Viking hat, we'd be stumped for a good park T-shirt. I eventually got one that at least had the name of the park on the shirt, but that didn't really sell the park. The most interesting shirts came only in kids' sizes. Several of them had the park's name and described its themes in English: ``Dinosaurs. Knights. Vikings. Century.'' This odd free-verse poem we eventually decoded: ``Century'' was their attempt to render the Belle Epoque/Turn-of-the-century theme of the area near the park's entrance. If they had it in a size I could fit, I'd have gotten that.

Trivia: Early 20th century estimates put about eight percent of the United States's coal use was waste, carbon put directly into smoke. Source: Coal: A Human History, Barbara Freese.

Currently Reading: Authority, Jeff Vandermeer.

PS: A Summer 2015 Mathematics A To Z: tensor, defining a mathematical construct that I actually don't get to do much with, it happens. Third.

Tags: amusement parks, animal liberation 40 years on tour
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