Place Carnot, Lyon.

Every year we absolutely, positively must go in order to, at the very least, add a few more Escoffier santons to our creche collection. The Escoffier - from whom we've been buying our santons since we got to France - not only make the most beautiful santons I've ever seen but they get extra brownie points because they always group together and smile nicely so I can take their photo.

The activity of picking out santons always brings a little rumbling of the tummy so we follow it with some serious stuffing of our faces with pretzels (both salty and sweet) and mulled wine. We also wanted to buy another handmade puppet for the Captain Destructo from the artisan from Belley, but we didn't see him at the market this year. That was a bummer.

Things perked up again when we saw the Tartiflette Man stirring up an enormous pan of steaming tartiflette inside of his stand. Mr Le Hubby, the Captain and I had some in order to warm our toes and as I ate it, I looked up and saw that the Tartiflette Man had named his stand "Le Temple du Fromage", or "The Temple of Cheese". I wanted to snap yet another photo of his sign because it made me smile but, to be frank, I didn't want to stop eating because the tartiflette was just too good. As I once saw on a bumper sticker on a car in the parking lot of my apartment complex, "In Tartiflette We Trust".

Santons Escoffier http://escoffier.fr/
Mulled wine (I had white this time) from Alsace: http://noel.tourisme-alsace.com/en/mulled-wine/
La Tartiflette: http://www.cuisine-french.com/cgi/mdc/l/en/recettes/tartiflette_ill.html
Les bretzels d'Alsace in my flickr favorites: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philippe_haumesser/3555151918/in/pool-portra