French pastries and coffee

This morning we had a bit of a late start and shopped for bread and pastries at the Sofitel Metropole's Le Gourmand pastry shop. The French were kind enough to leave behind architecture and food, and you can guess my preference.

Today's fare: baguette, pain au chocolat, tartine, and of course, le cafe. The baguette are just the right mix of crispy crust and airy inside (but not insubstantial). The baguette's smaller 20-cm Vietnamese cousins, the banh mi, are sold all day everyday from street vendors and are tasty too.

The traditional coffee here, cafe sua, is served in either a cup or glass with an metal container set atop with an individual portion of grounds. Boiling water is poured into the top, coffee drips out the bottom into the waiting cup. That cup should contain a healthy portion of sweetened condensed milk to mix in. Lovely stuff.