The Tulips

I had many questions by email about the tulips at the top of the blog. Yes they are real and yes I took the picture. (I didn't borrow it from Goggle Images!) I bought them last week at the Sunday market for 5 euros. They stayed that beautiful for at least 5 days and then started to drop their petals. I have written about this before, but nothing is open on Sundays. If you really need something, you have to be creative. Here is an example...

Last Sunday I needed an avacado. Bob wanted to make sushi and we had all the ingredients except the avacado for the California rolls. I set out on a quest to find a ripe avacado on a Sunday at 1:00pm. I first stopped at our local convenience store that has odd hours and is open on Sunday. They have a lot of things, although expensive, but no ripe avacados. Then I went to two more stores just like ours in other locations, no luck again. Finally I happened upon the Sunday market in a nearby commune. My time was starting to run out by now and I knew they would close around 2:00. This market is huge with a chicken man, 2 flower stalls, numerous food and wine vendors, and 3 vegetable stands. All 3 vegetable vendors sold avacados but none of them were ripe. All the people told me "3 days" which means we would have to wait 3 days for the avacado to be ripe. Then I happened upon a woman selling Japanese food in little cartons. People were buying and eating her food along with tons of other selections form other cooks. She had a huge variety of stock in her stall with which she used to cook. Oddly enough, she had an avacado behind her counter. In a combination of English/Japanese and Flemish, she agreed to sell me her one, lonely ripe avacado for 2 euros. It was worth the high price because we ended up with great sushi and an even better story.