An International Kind of Day

We started the day in a French bakery in St. Albert, which is just outside of Edmonton. In a different life I may have been able to tell you which direction outside of the city, but this is not that life! As it was, we turned off Galinda, or Estelle, or whatever her name was, and have turned back to Siri. She knows her stuff, even in a different country. To heck with the data plan! LOL.

Macarons & Goodies is a sweet little bakery selling...macarons and more! We arrived for breakfast and I ordered a pan au chocolat, and some sort of coffee, and Mom had a spinach and goat cheese...frillet? frieullet? feullet? Honestly we cannot remember what it was! Except for that it was delicious. We also ordered some macarons, just the most perfect macarons: chewy, flaky, creamy...YUM!

Then we explored St. Albert's a little more. It's a very sweet town, doing a heck of a job at keeping their history in tact. The town was founded by a Father Lacombe in the late 1860s. Not being well versed with all things Catholic, some of the history sort of washed over me. We did walk the grounds at the mission, which was very beautiful.

Then, we did the most important thing one can do on vacation. We napped!! One needs adventure, fun, good food, and LOTS of sleep. :) 

A day that started in France, ended in the Ukraine! We signed up for a pysanka egg decorating class at Muttart Conservatory. 

Pysanka is an egg decorating method using wax-resist. Obviously I have copied part of that sentence from Wikipedia... We started the class with an egg, a candle, some wax, and tool that looked like a mini hatchet. 

The small tool turned out to be a "kistka" which has a point on one end and a small funnel on the end for the wax. Fun fact: it auto corrects to "Kristin".  You put the wax in the funnel end, and then the entire head of the tool in the candle flame to heat it up. Then you draw on your egg. 

The black wax is actually the part of your egg that will be white in the end.  After you draw on your egg, getting perhaps the first part of the design down, you dye it in a light color. They suggested yellow first, or going light to dark. With each layer, you added more wax, thus sealing the new color on to the egg. Honesty, I was confused nearly the whole time. The teacher had her two teenage daughters there to help, who sneaked me helpful information along the way! I would tell you their names, but I couldn't pronounce them, far less spell them!

The final dye was black. And then came the process of un-waxing the egg. I'm sure there's a better term, but that's sort of what we did! You put the egg in the flame, waited until you saw the wax lines turned glossy, and then you wiped the wax off. 

What was revealed were the layers of colors under the wax. Also, what was revealed was a complete surprise! I had almost no idea what I had created until I rubbed off the wax. 

Aren't those just the coolest! This was just a random class I saw posted on Facebook, and what a treat to be a part of it! There are so many different cultures here in Edmonton, and we loved learning something brand new.

The evening ended with a tour of Muttart (and the obligatory garden tour of the trip - ha!). Muttart is four pyramids that feature three different biomes and a feature garden. The biomes were tropical, arid, and temperate, and there was a candy themed garden in the final pyramid. 

Our vacation goals are quite simple for the evening -- go to bed at a decent hour! It's only 11, so we have a chance! ;)