My best friend comes to visit

A and I used to always say that we were destined to be best friends based solely on our proximity to each other.  We met each other on the first day of highschool, and since then have gone through many of the best and worst times (thankfully) together.  We'd brave the treacherous walk up-hill after school (and even though it was completely unnecessary for me to walk up the hill, I'd do it just so that we could complain about it together), our dad's would take turns shuttling us to school and home from highschool dances and when we graduated they continued to do that for our little sisters.  There was also a rumored chance first-time meeting between our mothers at the mall, where they clasped hands as if they were long-lost somethings.

We'd went on to university together, partied together, moaned and groaned about boys together, moved out together, went to concerts, were jerks together, even went to thailand in matching outfits and backpacks together.  It was a trip that we'd talked about taking together ever since we saw "Brokedown Palace"...the last piece in solidifying our best-friendedness, and we were going to test it all with a Thai prison as a backdrop.

A moved away to NYC a few years ago and most of what we share fall more and more into the past.  I can't really describe how it felt to see her and J step off that bus in Toulouse.  It was bizarrely emotional.  A is like a living time capsule for me. Looking at her is like a collapsed view of so many things that made up my life...and it really underscores where I am (and where she is) and how far we've come since before we were 25.  It's difficult to stay close with the distance and the wonky time difference and I chalk it up to taking our "proximity" for granted - I never thought about what it would mean to not live 5 minutes away from her, let alone on a different continent.  So I'd have to say it's always a little bittersweet when we see each other in new environments, because she's her and I love her - but it's a strange reminder that we're not together in the same places like we used to be.   

After having said all that - here are some pictures of us in same places TOGETHER! I was ecstatic to meet J (he's wonderful and that's a relief) and to share a little bit of what my life has been like here in France with her.

We'd concluded that between our 4 entrees and mains, we had consumed an entire duck that meal.

Before we knew how much duck we were getting into.

More photos from J's camera

This is l'eglise St. Etienne, one of our favourites because of all the churches we see around here (and we see a lot) it's the most interesting in a slap-dash patched together kind of way.  The church had run out of financing part way through construction.  It was slowly (in phases) completed over time, which accounts for the strange shape and afterthought-like look of the church.  Cathedrals and churches are generally shaped like a cross - this one, as you can see, does its own strange and wonderful thing.

When you walk by these buildings everyday, you kind of forget how old and lovely they are.    

Spring is in full force here in Toulouse.  Parks and gardens that we used to walk in during the winter look and sound completely different.  We were walking by this little pond/water feature when we heard the racket.  We spotted several of these guys croaking away.

Goodbye Toulouse...

We're leaving Toulouse for Paris next week...most things are taken care of and the next week will be relatively stress free.  We've had 2 sets of visitors since last week.  First it was A & J making a pit stop in Toulouse from their trip to Barcelona and then P's cousin J & S from Canterbury.  It is always nice to have visitors, it helps us re-see Toulouse for all its pretty charm and past the dog shit and whiffs of urine from small medieval alleys.

Here are some photos that J took during her visit - some rare ones of us at the market doing our usual market thing amidst older french women in fancy sunglasses.  They love their fancy sunglasses here.

Piles and piles of different types of salad.  I'm waiting to pay for radishes and red oak leaf lettuce.  We're at the daily market of Blvd. Strasbourg.  

Hands down, the coolest carousel we've seen so far.  Rather than garish horses and carriages on the typical merry-go-rounds, this one had different versions of old flying machines, boats, a giant bucking ant, rhinos and a crocodile.  After one turn, I saw a little boy go up to the old man who ran the thing and the old man pulled out a little candy from his pocket for the boy.  Love, love, love that.  

Just when we were getting into it...

It's mid-march and I'll be leaving Toulouse in a month.  A month!!  We finally got some of that southern france weather (the weather we came for) this weekend.  It was 19 and sunny.  yeah, I know.  Our landlord's mother, told us that this has been an unusually cold winter and that this 19 degrees business usually starts in February, but instead we were slogging through an extra rainy/cold winter.  But no complaints, we're going to make up for it this next month.  P and I went to lunch at Place St. Georges...or where the rich, beautiful and sunglasses clad french families go to dine.  *sigh, here in France, small children wear nicer clothes than I do - and by nicer I mean WAAY nicer,  like burberry trenchcoats and such.  

P got steak tartare (our first time here), and the thing came out as a raw hamburger mound with chopped up cornichons, onions and capers in it...AND a raw egg right on top.  I mean, we knew what we were getting, but it was still a sight for us non-raw-hamburger/egg-eating types.  It was a lot of raw beef and raw egg in one sitting, but we liked it and ate it all.  It comes with worsteshire sauce, mustard and tobasco sauce on the side - a nice lady sitting at the table next to us gave us instructions on how to eat and manage the thing.  Put the sauce on it, mix it through with the egg (much like one would prepare fresh hamburgers, only you don't throw it on the grill), then mound it onto bread and eat. 

When we're not pigging out on raw meat amidst beautiful french families, we're eating this:

Choucroute garni - it's an Alsatian specialty of saurkraut (warmed through) garnished with sausages, smoked meats and potatoes.  We walk by this stuff at the pig butcher stalls, but never tried it until last week.  We asked the lady to explain to us what to do and how to eat it and she packed up enough for a meal for the 2 of us.  In the picture we have: 2 types of sausages, a slice of smoked pork shoulder, some boiled potatoes and the choucroute.  Who knew a steaming mound of hot sour cabbage would be so good.  There's a butcher that specializes in choucroute garni and we're going to get stuff from there next time and see how the two meals compare.

random things...

It's been a while so I thought I'd rummage through my photos to find some stuff that I'd been saving for posts.  I've given up on photo-documenting things, our camera sucks and I am SO not diligent about taking photos, so you'll have to bear with the lack of images that go with my ramblings.   French lessons are going great and we're feeling less socially/linguistically retarded here in France.  Since I last posted we had a visit from P's cousin Bjorn, and we've been hanging out with friends from school.  You can only imagine the hilarity that comes with a group of internationals communicating in their second/third language.   Random pictures as promised:

 

Typical lunch - a spread of the cheeses, saucisson/jambon or cornichons and pickles that we have kicking around, and we always have these things kicking around.  I generally dislike sandwiches and Paul lives for them, so this is a happy medium - we get all the components of a sandwich (bread, meat, cheese) without being bound by the form.  Crackers (good crackers) are hard to come by here.  The cracker aisle in the grocery store consists of different forms of dried toast, so if that's what you're into, you'd be in dried toast heaven here in France.  

I was missing burgers a while back so we decided to make them.  Hamburger buns don't exist in grocery stores so we had to improvise a little.  The closest thing that I could think of was a brioche.  I'm going to make a generalization here: overall food quality is high in France.  I think people here are specific about what they want and demand a lot out of the food they buy and eat, which really means that a grocer or a store needs to meet those demands.  You can see it in the way customers ask for very specific qualities for the food that they're buying and you can hear it all the time, "I want a crottin that's not too dry", "a baguette that's well cooked", "I want smaller leeks" etc.  After having said that, the burgers turned out pretty lacklustre because of the beef.  Beef is just not as good (meaning tasty and fatty) here as it is back home.  I don't buy/eat beef all that often here and when we do it's usually for stew, and I made beouf à la ficelle one time, in which you boil beef until medium-rare with vegetables.  I know what you're thinking, "boiled beef?", but you just gotta think about cooking beef differently here.

Here's another picture from our window - bored of them yet?  The sunsets and the sun rises have been really beautiful the last few weeks and I tried to do my best with our crappy camera. 

CHOCOLATE.

Our school offers a series of activities based on a given theme each month.  Well wouldn't you know that february just so happens to be "gastronomy".  We spent an afternoon at a chocolatier (Maison Pillon) learning all about chocolate (the process of growing, harvesting, processing, extracting the oil etc...).  But really.  We were there to see melted chocolate running endlessly out of machines and riding there, all aloof and delicious on conveyer belts.

This super nice guy gave us the tour and here is him snapping pieces of honey ganache onto the conveyer belt.  The little tablets of honey ganache ride patiently at the start of the belt, each waiting for their pass under the chocolate curtain.

 

Et Voilà.  Shiny and all chocolate covered.

Each chocolate has it's own mark or design.  The honey ones get a  diagonal line made by a little pick dipped onto the top while it's still wet.

The chocolate continues on the yellow conveyor belt through a cooling case, where it comes out on the other end PERFECT.   They get picked off the belt and packed onto a tray or boxes.  It was early February and the Maison Pillon was already starting their production for easter.  We got our fill of chocolates during the tour, but still picked out a few for tea treats at home.  Probably some of the best chocolate I've had.  Winners were: ganache of bergamot and passionfruit.   The texture of chocolate and the ganache was smooth and cool on the tongue.  The flavours were perfectly balanced, the chocolate didn't get upstaged by the flavoured ganache...like they were more than happy to be on the same team, think: Fresh Prince & Jazzy Jeff, Marx & Engels, W. Strunk Jr & E. B White, Penny & Brain, Monsieur & Madame Curie, Carl & Harriet Winslow, Austro & Hungaria... 

Visitors...

Ten days, two couples, 35 sq. metres in France - I'm going to pitch it as a reality tv series.  It was pretty cozy up in our studio, and I'd hate to disappoint but there wasn't the drama worthy of reality TV...maybe just a pseudo romance between Jordan and Paul, but that story was years in the making and if it didn't get made while they were tenting up together in the Yukon...it's probably never going to get made.  My dreams of producing reality tv aside, it was GREAT!  Jordan and Vanessa were super guests - they indulged me in my food craziness by being interested and hungry (all the time), they cooked some great meals for us, did dishes AND got us some really thoughtful gifts.  And it was just fun to share Toulouse and our little transplanted life in France.  All fun, all food all the time.   

Ask anyone, I'm always the first one to fall asleep at sleepovers.

Vanessa and I decided that Jordan needed a haircut.  There was a whole series of photos, but I thought I'd spare some of you the photos of people you don't know cutting hair in a bathroom.  The end result looked pretty good to us (but that's because we're not professionals).  Good work everybody.

Riverside, outside our apartment.  On sunny warm days, there are a lot of djembe drummers, and we hear them from our fourth floor apartment.  Our Toulousian friends warned (more like mocked) us about it...like we should have known or something.  

The boys decided to grab a drink at Cafe des Artistes and delegated grocery shopping to us.  This is them saying good bye.  I'm posting thumbnails these days, so you can't really zoom in to see, but trust me they look smug.

On our riverside walk - this is looking at the other bridge.  I should know what it's called, but all we ever see and think about is Pont Neuf...which means "new bridge", but is actually the oldest bridge in the city.  

How did THIS happen?

It's 8:22 friday morning.  I've got class today at 9:00, usually it's 8:30 but 9 for fridays, not complaining.  P's got classes at 8:30 still and I love love love being the person that gets to stay in bed while the other has to get up.  I've been e-absent of late because long gone are the days when all I really had to do was wake up, think about food, read and cruise the internet.  We are full time, elbow-deep in French classes.  I miss the retirement schedule of december, but it's been so great to learn french.  Tradeoffs.  We've gone back to "easy" food for dinners and lunches, but the weekend is coming and I'm going on a market tear for saturday and sunday AND it's Chinois Nouvel An so gotta figure out something to eat...fish, I think it's a must for new years.

Nuther post to come.

Christmas and kisses...

(It snowed on the morning of the 26th...big fat fluffly flakes, but was gone by the afternoon - the view of the snow - not in all its glory from our window)

 

So it came and went. P and I spent a quiet, but gastronomically indulgent christmas season.  2 versions of a christmas meal, a french one on christmas eve involving oysters, scallops, duck, creamed chard and other coronary damaging foods and a more familiar dinner of turkey and the associated trimmings for Christmas dinner.  I should also say that I've been doing a lot of "experimental" baking in our toaster oven and we now have a (tiny) freezer full of christmas baking to last us through to the new year.  

Our Christmas night was made a little more exciting by a sudden power outage in our apartment (we were cooking) - everything in the fusebox looked right and the lights in the apartment building on our floor were on...so we had no choice but to knock on Monsieur Boudon's door and ask for help.  M. Boudon lives on the 1st floor of our building and is something of an informal "keeper" of the building.  We were introduced when we first moved in and were told to go to him if we ever needed anything.  M. boudon has a clear, booming french voice (only french) and is an amalgamation of a Hans Moleman in his "youth" and a  character from the "Guess Who" boardgame.  Does your person have small eyes?  Does your person have a big nose?  Is your person impossibly french and exactly the type of short and slightly pudgy person to run your french apartment building?  Is it M. Boudon?!  When we told him that our electricity had cut out, he shuddered at the thought of going up the stairs to the fourth floor, but nevertheless, put on some shoes and brought along a flashlight.  It was a quick fix after all.  Nothing to do with the breakers, but rather a giant button that was apparently linked to the main generator.  It wasn't the first time M. Boudon saved us, so in a panic, I looked around the cupboards for a "thanks/merry christmas" kind of treat.  (Un)fortunately, all we had were some chocolates that we had picked out for christmas from a nice shop...we shyly presented it to him and he refused, but we said that it was a little gift for christmas...he couldn't really refuse.  I got some christmas kisses from him and with a handshake for Paul, he went back to his flat.  Not that we were in need of sweets for christmas or anything and we were more than happy to give them to him...but we kinda missed those chocolates - I'd handpicked each one.

We've made some friends here (through someone from Paris we had met in Berlin) and have since gone out a couple times with them.  Yay for friends!  I was scolded on the first night we'd met because I put out my hand for a handshake and they said, "put that away, you're in France and a girl - you kiss".  Alas, I've been initiated into the world of bisous.  From that point on, it was kisses.  You know, I was wondering about that, if I was going to do them and how it was all going to go down, but it was all good.  I feel 10% frencher.  We went out for drinks the other night with 2 guys and by the end of the evening even P was being kissed goodbye.    

Produce from the market on the morning of Christmas eve.  We went to the madhouse that is Christmas Eve at Les Halles Victor Hugo for the seafood and duck.  Imagine a covered market with stalls of seafood, butcher counters, cheese stands and bakers..and then imagine it packed with frenetic french people clamouring for their christmas food.  Oysters were being sold like chocolates in the shops, each displayed in their own wooden crates ranging from 6 to 20 euro/dozen.  

Pain d'epice (spice cake) from the Christmas market.  This is to die for as it is, and transcendent in a trifle with port and prunes (we had enough trifle to last 4 days - no complaints).  A sexier dessert, I cannot think of.  It's hard to say why this is so mindblowingly delicious - maybe it's the dense texture, or the spicy and at times licorice-y tones...whatever it is, i am sad that no one at home can have a taste and confirm that I'm not crazy for being so seduced by this cake.  There is no shame in being hot and bothered by this cake.  NO SHAME.

This was our Canadian christmas for 2.  We did herbed turkey breast wrapped in bacon accompanied by its groupies.  Christmas in France was a little surreal, and it wasn't until we sat down at this meal that we felt it was Christmas.  Didn't take any pictures of the fancy french dinner - which was a little hairy during the plating and preparation, what with the oysters being shucked and having to deal with all that hot, rendered fat from the duck. 

Vin chaud anyone?

Daytime visit to the Christmas market.  Je voudrais hot in my wine and gizzard confit in my potato.

Hot spiced wine.  Try weaving through the throngs of people with a full glass of hot red wine - we actually chickened out and pulled off to the side until it was a little less full.  Yes.  That's gizzard confit on my baked potato.  Confit means to slow cook in duck or goose fat to preserve things.  Aside from preserving it, it also makes things tender and about 25Xs tastier, but animal fats will do that to things.

"l'esgoulade".  Country style bread, with cancoillotte and shavings of some strong, aged, hard stuff.  They get it bubbly and brown under the grill and then crack the crusty top so that the splash of armagnac has somewhere to go.

It's hot...and delicious.  Winner.

Even ten-thousandsdaires experience culture shock...

I came across a website for Americans in Toulouse and they had an entire page devoted to culture shock.  It's defined by an anthropologist in the 60s as, “the anxiety that results from losing familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse.”  Lacking an active social life (and probably suffering from a mild case of culture shock), I was quick to wrap myself up in the melodrama of being in culture shock.  The general indications for Month 1 was accurate for the most part.  Month 2 sounds depressing and Month 3 is supposed to be marked by depression and weightgain.  P, being my (self-procalimed) "voice of reason", said that we're not in culture shock.  A lack of confidence borne from my foreign surroundings didn't allow me to contest his denial.  Culture shock or not, things are different here.  Some differences good, some bad.

It was somewhat of a miracle that we managed to find a place in a week, without the use of a rental agency...  (read more)

supermarket desserts

Check out what I found in the dessert aisle of the supermarket.  2 servings for 2 euros.  2 little squares of cold velvety chocolate fondant.

Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) good.  

Each fondant came with its own little pot of creme anglaise (obviously), no self-respecting supermarket would sell chocolate fondant on it's own - I would never shop at such a base establishment.

Oysters are a Christmas food here.  They're everywhere and in all forms in baskets at the markets.  These are No. 3 oysters from Brittany, 6.50/dozen.

Cold, briny and melony.  I made 2 different mignonettes to try - but I think they were best with lemon...and white wine of course.  I muscled through opening 8 of them, and then had to get P to finish opening the rest.  The oyster knife is sharp, the oyster shells are sharp and we were using excessive force.  After the ordeal, we decided that we needed to have the emergency numbers handy...in case of oyster-related injuries.

If you're sick of food, here's a picture from a walk we took the other day.  It's just moss and plants growing on the side of a brick building.

Apartment photos...

It's a little plain, but it's the way we like it and it's a place to hang our hats.  Don't have pictures of the kitchen or bathroom...but they are both new and spacious.  The kitchen is really a dream by french apartment standards (especially since we're in a studio apartment).  It's got a large window and more counter space than I know what to do with.  

You can see the corner of the kitchen at the other end of the apartment, the frame of the window is just visible to the left of the hood.

Our bedroom...er bedtent.

Livingroom.

View from the front door.  Windows are small, but luminous.

Mystery market

About a week and a half ago, when we first got to Toulouse to look for an apartment there were some mysterious stirrings at the Place du Capitole.  The Capitole is located in the very centre of Toulouse and boasts a large open space for exhibition, markets and impressing girls on your scooters and motor bikes, popping wheelies.  Large restaurants line the perimeter of the Place and the small curvey streets that make up the centre of Toulouse all radiate from…or lead to the Capitole.

The mystery consisted of some temporary fencing and what looked like small, neat wooden cabins stacked together in a solid square, a cabin condo on one floor.  There would be new development each day, the cabins would be moved from one end to another and there was always work going on in the fenced area, but with little clue as to what was actually being done.  Then a small sheet of ice was put down in one corner, the cabins spaced apart forming small rows…then some lights, and then they were open!  Well, duh.  Of course.  CHRISTMAS MARKET!!!  Most open-air markets that we’ve experienced so far are set up and torn down on a daily basis, so what may be a bustling market scene on Sunday morning, will be completely cleared out and restored back into the parking lot of a church or a little square by 2 in the afternoon.  The Christmas market is on every day until 8 in the evening from now until Christmas Eve.  What do you think I like best about the market?  Oh, could it be the aligot and truffade?  How about the mugs of hot spiced wine…no, maybe a slice of some spice cake sold by weight?  We walked by rows of specialty cabins selling hot chocolate, fried ham/bacon sandwiches with fried onions, and giant slices of country levain bread under some creamy substance and grated cheese broiled open-faced, advertised as a “slice of tradition”.  Don’t even get me started on the baked potatoes topped with your choice of gizzard confit, fried duck skin, or ham/cheese/tomato & crème fraiche.

P and I solemnly declared to try every Christmas market street food item between now and Christmas eve, and whether you like it or not – I’m going to tell you about it. We went where the line-up was longest, so first up: aligot.  Basic components: mashed potatoes whipped with cheese (in the style of cantal, laguiole or salers – you can get it at Les Amis du Fromage in Vancouver).  Remember titrations in chemistry class?  Yes.  The maximum amount of cheese that any given mass of mash potatoes would molecularly tolerate.  You wait in a long line until you come up to the counter, where a large “wok” of aligot sits steaming and stringy.  Mr. Aligot has to plop and pull the ladle high to free the cheesy mass into a small rectangular container. 2 plastic forks and 4 euro later we are pulling the stuff into our mouth like the locals do.  What struck me most was how potato-ey it tasted despite how simultaneously cheesy it was.  The texture: cheese stringy, but not chewy, soft and smooth like good mashed potatoes. But let’s call it what it really is – aligot.  *note, truffade was sold at the same place. From what I could tell, it was aligot with bacon and pieces of potatoes.    

The day before the market started - you have to imagine these things all laid out next to each other in a solid block.  You can see the framing for the ice rink just to the right of the photo.

Salade de chevre chaud...chez nous.

Moving day

18 Place de la Daurade, Toulouse.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m typing this from my little window desk nook.  That’s right MY window desk nook.  We gave ourselves one week to find an apartment…and we did it.  In fact, we took the first and only place we saw, because the price was right and it was AWESOME.  A spacious studio, 4 floors up (sans acensur) overlooking the Place de la Daurade, the Garonne river to our right and the entire span of Pont Neuf  outside our living room windows.  It’s quiet today, like all Sundays here, and it’s hard to imagine that just 2 days ago we had rented a truck, drove out to some French suburbs to get furniture (most importantly a bed for that night) and drove it back into the city centre and moved all our stuff up 4 flights of stairs. We understood the true meaning of pain when trying to park the truck in the “hyper-centre” of Toulouse during rush hour.  Stress was at an all time max-out.  Moving all our furniture and stuff up four flights of stairs seemed like a breeze after the whole truck ordeal.  But with everything put in its place (including our backpacks which are empty and in storage) I can shudder off the whole ordeal like a bad dream and think about what to make for dinner tonight. 

We went to the market along Strasbourg Blvd. and although the market is one of the most impressive ones I’ve been to, the highlight of my shopping trip was buying a piece of butter that was cut off of a large block from the cheese/dairy vendor.  A little salty and wrapped up in a piece of wax paper, just the way I like it.  Got some basics and toted it all the way home in a basket: cheese, fruit, vegetables, olives, sundried tomatoes, a baguette and a roast chicken.  Set on the kitchen counter by the window, it’s a still life of sorts.

Pont Neuf over the Garonne from our living room window.

The view from the kitchen window.

Some things I like about France...

Initially, one of the main factors for choosing a city to live in was its food scene.  I promptly crumpled that thought and tossed it out of my head.  EVERYWHERE in france is a good food scene.  France loves and cares about food - like I do, probably waay more than I do.  Here are some things I like about France:

Little violet drops.  As tasty as they are pretty.  Don't let this elegantly casual display fool you, did you really think that these candies splayed out there like this on their own?  I painstakingly sprinkled the violets just so on a brand new pillow in our hotel room.  Surfaces that didn't make the cut: a white towel, my hands and an unfolded napkin from our sandwiches the day before.

The bread.

Shellfish in baskets and oysters in boxes - don't care how the song goes, but these are a few of MY favorite things.

If you really want to know who I am, you really have to understand this:  there are fewer things in life that are more dramatic and special then long, perfect strips of candied orange peel dipped in dark chocolate.  "Orangette", like a whisper from an extinguished candle flame.  It was expensive, but if I hadn't, my heart would never forgive me. 

Toulouse; we're getting warmer...

So Toulouse beats out Bordeaux because: a) it's got a laid back student-town kind of charm and bustle; b) our french classes are right in the centre in an old converted church; and c) this city seems to love markets as much as I do.  I mean all sorts of markets.  On our way to the botanical gardens in Toulouse (yes, I wanted to see another botanical garden), we came upon a crazy antiques roadshow type flea market.  The contents at this market looked like it had been looted from old churches, castles and fancy peoples' homes.  We found out that this market takes place on one weekend each month; the stalls were full of fancy old furniture, french linens, silverware and chandeliers.  Can't wait to sink my ailing canadian funds into some great furniture here - pending an unfurnished apartment.

We also woke up to another market on the street surrounding the church outside our hotel.  This one was slightly less cool, and had stalls of a lot of cheap imported stuff.  I can stock up for those of you who want euro-style man skivvies at 2euros a piece.  And of course the food markets.  I'm unable to write about them.  It's an emotional and  stimulation overload.  Just recalling the sights and smells incapacitates my ability to linguistically organize the experience.  Will try and post pictures instead.

Love Toulouse.

     

Basilique St. Sernin - taken two steps outside of our hotel.

We had lunch outside at "de jardin chez nous" - each had a quiche and salad, as the other specials of the day were being crossed off the chalkboard.   Restaurants in Toulouse are all about lunch, and many of them close at four.  We sat next to some ladies visiting from Biarritz and had a nice chat with them.  Flustered at having french people pay attention to us, I panicked and ordered the pistache framboise...instead of the chocolate gateau I had in mind.

...but that wasn't so bad now was it?  In fact it was SO good!

Little swings in the park at the botanical garden.  They were like jellybean boat swings.  Whoever designed this was thinking about the children.