When I was a child, my family spent a week in Brittany every year during the spring break. The place where we went most often was Carnac, on the South coast of Brittany, a little town famous for its stunning prehistoric menhir alignments. It was always quite a gamble on the weather, as that time of year has equal chances of being brightly sunny, or grimly overcast and even thunderous. But I would be hard-pressed to choose the kind of weather I preferred : of course I loved riding my bike in the sun until I had sunburns on the backs of my hands, and building sandcastles that we fought to protect against the rising tide ; but I also have great memories of watching storms from the safety of the seaside, in awe of the strength with which the waves came crashing onto the pier. Getting dressed from head to toe in waterproof gear, walking on the beach against the fierce wind, flying kites, and coming home, the four of us red-cheeked, drippy-nosed, hardly seeing a thing through our soaked and salty glasses.
Of course, I also have many fond food memories of those vacations. In Carnac we knew every crêperie, every bakery and which one had the best kouign aman, a caramelized flaked pastry involving rather indecent amounts of butter, every ice-cream parlor and which one had the best waffle cones and flavors.
But my personal favorite, the treat I looked forward to the most, was Les Niniches : a hard candy in the shape of a long, thin cylinder, in a colored wrapping, with a little stick to hold it.
