In Which I Reference Willy Wonka Twice...

I'm pretty sure everyone has their own conception of what heaven is. There's the traditional version: angels with wings, strumming harps on clouds, Saint Peter at the gates...Then there's my personal version, where just beyond Saint Peter there's an enormous library (Beauty and the Beast style...'cause that's how I roll), only instead of the Beast showing me around it's Johnny Depp and he's speaking in an Irish accent, just like in Chocolat (although, let's be honest, I'd take pretty much any incarnation of Johnny Depp except Willy Wonka. And maybe the creepy corn guy from Secret Window).

At least, that was heaven before I got to France. But the City of Lights has made me greedy. Now if I were sitting in my library and Mr. Depp tried to feed me a truffle I would shout, "No Johnny! Do you think simple chocolates hold any attraction for me, who has tasted one of the most divine concoctions known to humankind? Get it together man!" And then Johnny would shuffle off to the ice cream shop around the corner and bring me back a cone brimming with Berthillon ice cream.

Yes, the object of my obsession is none other than Berthillon, aka ambrosia of the ice cream gods. Tucked away in an unassuming shop on the Ile Saint-Louis are some of the most delicious, delicate and accurate flavors I have ever tasted. And by accurate, I mean these people have the ability to translate any taste perfectly into expensive, conveniently-sized scoops.

I know what you're thinking. It's just ice cream. This is theoretically true, and before every trip I try to tell myself that. But then I take one bite and I'm all: "The raspberries taste like raspberries. The snozzberries taste like snozzberries!" As one of my friends put it: "This is what ice cream aspires to be."

My top five flavors (in no particular order) are:

1) Caramel au beurre sale (salted butter carmel...with crunchy bits of salt and sugar inside)
2) Raspberry (tastes like a real raspberry, and is also the most gorgeous deep red color)
3) Speculoos (this mysterious flavor that one of my friends ordered the other day; it turned out to be a wonderful gingerbread/snickerdoodle combination)
4) Pear (odd flavor for an ice cream, but wonderful nonetheless)
5) Chocolate (classic)

So there you have it. The reason that I will be leaving Paris both impoverished and obese. And lest you think I have had my fill, here is the complete list of flavors. I know it's in French, but I think you can get the gist. Delicious is a universal language.