On t'a bercé trop près du mur?

French Festival: fantastique! Bonny and I finally got ourselves into gear by about 6 and headed into South Bank where the festival was set up by the ferris wheel. Seems like Brisbane can't get it's own ideas for main attractions, this is a new initiative in copycat London style. The one thing we do have going for us (of late) is our council's ability to build bizarre bridges and decorate the entrance and exits of the new tunnels. They're almost up there with the people that create ads for Tourism Australia. 

Anyways, back to the French. Many of the stalls were shut down or had run out of food by the time we got there but we were lured to the 18+ section with the wafting scents of french onion soup (why this was in the fenced section, I have no idea.) This is positively the best $6 I have ever spent on food, period. It had a slice of baguette soaking in the soup with grated parmesan melted in. Who thought something so simple could be so soul warming? Bonny and I continued roaming, looking for sweets by this time...no crepes left sadly but whole containers of the richest mousse. Perfect texture. Just as we were about to seat ourselves in front of the live music stage, our noses led us astray again. The Magic Cauldron. Not only did it have the cutest chimney sweeperish guy- complete with thick French accent- but also a rotating pot of peanuts simmering in a toffee mixture of butter, honey, vanilla and a few other things. It was hard enough to get that much info out of them: (family recipe of a friend.) Heaven in a bag, served still hot. Made us come back for as many free samples as we could scrounge. (Don't worry we did actually buy a few bags too- what else could we dip in our mousse?) 

Got to see the can can girls dance it up with their flexibility, colourful skirts and a butt cheek or two. Great music, ranging from the stuff you would imagine in a little cafe on the roadside to a DJ pumping out the beats. Pete, Nick, Mark and a whole bunch of other guys all rocked up for about 15mins before they all dashed off to dessert in the valley. Marcus got there in time for us to tease him about taking so long to get ready and see the final few music acts. Many laughs later we traveled back to our cars (right at the other end of Southbank) via a Brazilian boy on a bike. Robert was working pretty hard peddling all 3 of us fatties along in the back. Nothing like being so lazy that you are mistaken for tourists!