Totally lazy day (apart from the morning run). I've decided that the best possible tip to get yourself up and running is this: lay out all your clothes, water, everything the night before. When you get out of bed the first thing you do is fling all your jogging clothes on as quickly as possible. This means that before you realize what you are doing, you are standing in the middle of your room dressed head to toe in sports clothes and absolutely no way of getting out of going on a run without feeling stupid and taking them all off again. Works everytime. Except once when I even got half way down three flights of stairs, changed my mind, and went back to my room. Low point.
Moving on, today's lazy day consisted of procrastination on a heroic level, starting with my first ever experience of overnight oats. Totally converted, last night I mixed up fromage blanc, soy milk, compote, cinnamon, pinch of salt and in the morning topped it off with raisins, flax seeds, even more cinnamon and ground hazelnut. I even took it out of the fridge as motivation and staring at it and said "This loveliness is waiting for you when you get back." The sad thing is that it worked and I ran faster than I ever have before... forget fancy stopwatches. Foodivation is the way to go if you want to make that three minute mile!
Headed off to "Book in a Bar" for a post lunch tea break with my friends (despite my morning having been a perpetual tea break anyway...) "Book in a Bar" is one of my favorite places in Aix, it is a bookshop/coffeeshop anglaise where you can order just one tea and stay there for hours on end talking very loudly about politics, books, movies, anything you want, without anyone batting an eyelid. They serve scones and the most delicious pecan pies and just to prove its awesomeness, this is what greeted us on our table, felt just like home...
I don't know how many people in England actually have teapots with union jacks on them but it was so adorable. I ordered japanese green tea infused with cherry followed by a kiwi and apple smoothie which for some reason came with a speculoos biscuit. Don't french people know how incompatible speculoos biscuits and smoothies are? Smoothies are not for dunking! Madness. Or maybe this is just the strict tea regulations I'm used to in England talking. Needless to say, none of us approved.
Saying this, speculoos is another obsession over here which it is perfectly justified. I saw this spread in the supermarket about a month ago and took a photo for a speculoos crazy friend back in England who even gets thes stuff shipped over. That is how much people love it. I would say the speculoos popularity is about on a par with digestive biscuit love back home. They are everywhere, with supermarkets doing own brand speculoos. After discussing it with a friend however, (yes we do have 30 minute conversations about biscuits) we decided that nothing beats the hobnob dunking wise. Not even close. Didn't stop us from putting speculoos spread in hot chocolate though...
BEHOLD.
