Two hours ago, our train was just departing Paris, and now we are settled back home, looking through our photos and getting ready for bed.

We had a wonderful two days in France with our four friends. After a quick journey through the snow-dusted countryside, we met up in the hotel and set out to taste our way through the city. After a quick stop at the Pantheon, we sat down to some crêpes at the Crêperie Josselin for our first meal together in a bustling restaurant filled with Dutch decorations and an astounding number of menu choices.

Once our bellies were filled, we caught the cramped metro to the Les Halles district. While the others admired the shelves of sweets, teas, spices, chocolates, teas, mustards, dried fruits, and pâtés at G. Detou (“J’ai de tout” – I have it all), I bought a brightly coloured insulated coffee mug at the evanescent Pylones design store.

After a few more hours strolling along the streets while some soft snow fell upon our noses, we turned up for our reservation at A La Biche Au Bois (The doe in the woods). Adrian had a goat’s cheese omelette while I had a tender fresh salmon with wild mushrooms, then stole spoonfuls of crème brûlée and chocolate cake from the others’ desserts.

The next day, breakfast was a fresh pain au chocolat (chocolate croissant) dipped in steaming hot chocolate before a stroll through Luxembourg Gardens. The gardens were looking a little grim this time of year, with most trees preparing for the impending snow to soon descend upon their boughs. After a seafood lunch – I had crayfish tail and mango salad – we said farewell to Liannabanana & J who were off to watch their other friends get married in Paris.

Our final stop with Shyla & Luke was to explore the Galeries Lafayette, which were packed to the brim with shoppers. We rested our legs and revived our hearts with some drinks at the champagne bar while admiring the sparkling tree reaching towards the center of the 1912 glass and steel dome. All too soon it was time to say goodbye to our amis américains and hop back on the Thalys to home in Brussels.

Last week we took our friend Lina to the small Walloon town of Dinant. It is a beautiful little town situated on the River Meuse, featuring a citadel accessible by cable-car, allowing us to look down over its onion-domed Collegiale Notre-Dame (Church of Our Lady). Dinant is also the birthplace of Adolphe Sax, who invented the saxophone, and the couque, Europe’s hardest biscuit. We bought a few tiny sticks of the honey-flavoured couques to try, and they were very delicious, if a little difficult to consume.

While we were there, we also discovered that today was the day of the annual pie-eating contest. I looked it up on my iPhone and discovered that the record stood at fourteen. Wow, we thought, fourteen pies in fourty-five minutes. That is impressive. The pies were like quiches, and called flamische, as they were cooked over the flames. The Confrérie des Quarteniers de la Flamiche Dinantaise (Brotherhood of the Officers of the Dinant Flamische) assembled on stage, the choir began to sing, and the competition began. We quickly realised that the record was fourteen slices, not fourteen pies. And why was this number so low? Because the men insisted on using their knives and forks, pausing between mouthfuls to enjoy a glass of burgundy wine and to answer questions over the microphone. Even in an eating competition, the European instinct was to savour every mouthful. All the contestants simply ate until they were full, then pushed back their plates and watched the others with a smile. No records for gluttony were broken in Dinant that day.