At every campsite we visited in France there were “fresh baked bread and croissants” for purchase every morning. We never thought much of it until the first morning we notice a very large line at 7am and wondered what was going on in the camp reception area. Everyone was picking up their bread/croissant orders they placed the night before.
Being from Hawaii, we don’t often eat bread or croissants for breakfast. It’s mainly rice, eggs, bacon, spam or cereal if we are lazy. But here in France (or in Europe), bread is a staple food item, with most families giving each child a fresh baked baguette of their own for breakfast.
That afternoon we place our orders for breakfast “breads” and waiting till the morning came. At 8am, we walked over the the reception to find that everything was gone and only our order was left for “pick up”. Apparently, we were lucky as the staff member informed us that they almost sold our order if we showed up after 8am. (geez)
Before we left a “friendly” staff member handed us back the order my husband had scribbled on prior afternoon. She made corrections to the order, which I though was funny. She crossed out the word chocolate croissant, and wrote “pain au chocolat”. She said that in France, many tourists order “chocolate croissants” and frankly the French get annoyed with this. She said to call it by what it truly was, Pain Au Chocolat.
It took us awhile to get Jaf to call it by its new name. It’s become his favorite breakfast item, with a glass of milk.
We were wondering why every time we’d order a chocolate croissant from somewhere they would respond back with “you want pain au chocolat?”.
Just some information you might need incase you travel to France…