Hip

This is another shot from my salon, Bella, where my friend Rachel does my hair. I love how modern and comfortable they have the place decorated. It's also quite festive with the red and green being quite appropriate for this time of year. Happy Christmas Eve!

Shopping at the Movies

This is the corner of Colville and Main Streets in downtown Walla Walla. As you can see, the dominant building is Macy's, a well-known high-end department store. I don't shop there much (due to the "high-end" part of that last sentence), but occasionally I like to browse. The store is kind of neat inside, since it used to be a movie theatre. Some of the floors are sloped, the walls are rounded and decorated, and the doors are wider than most store doors. While most of the inside really does resemble a department store, the youth section is very much still in the theatre shape, with a ramp into the section and a step down into the shopping area, with very high ceilings and angled walls instead of just a large square or rectangular room.

Beautiful Disaster

So many books I don't even know where to start! This is another shot of the inside of Earthlight Books, a new and used book shop located near the east end of Main Street in Walla Walla. I particularly like the random origami art hanging from the ceiling here. Another picture taken just for my friend, Ciel, from Versailles Daily Photo. Bonjour, mon amie!

Just for Cieldequimper

This may look like a mess to you, but to a local Walla Walla bookworm, this is heaven on earth. Welcome to Earthlight Books, a favourite haunting place for people like cieldequimper, author of Versailles Daily Photo, who visits the valley from time to time and adores this little book shop near the end of Main Street in downtown Walla Walla. This shot is for you, Ciel...and there's more to come tomorrow!

Cugini

This little shop is on the edge of town in College Place, and is one place I've yet to visit. It can be quite handy to have a place like this in a small town where, sadly, no Italian eateries exist. If you can't go to a restaurant, learn to make it yourself!

Les Petites Noirs 8

This is one of the two owners of Les Petites Noirs. Unfortunately I did not catch her name, but she is very knowledgeable; Not only about chocolate, but also about wine and coffee. She apprenticed with a candy-maker in New York for a few years to learn her chocolate craft. Now, obviously, she runs a successful chocolate shop in a small town in Oregon. It's nice to have people from all over the world in our little valley.

Les Petites Noirs 7

Here is the promised non-truffle chocolate display. Here they have toffee and chocolate bark. The toffee is flavoured with rum, coffee, and other selected items such as nuts and fruit. The chocolate bark has pistachios, walnuts, craisins, and perhaps some other things I'm forgetting. I taste-tested some coffee bean toffee and enjoyed it immensely. Les Petites Noirs allows for taste tests, so make sure you take advantage of that!

Les Petites Noirs 6

This picture I took just for the brilliant combination of colours. This sitting area is behind the display of non-truffle chocolates, which I will show you tomorrow. What a cozy area to enjoy some of the shop's specialty hot cocoa with friends in front of a roaring fire.

Les Petites Noirs 5

One of my favourite parts of the chocolate shop Les Petites Noirs is the white piano used as a display area. It looks as though at some point it might actually be used as a piano, since there is a bench provided, but I don't know when/if it has been. Perhaps for a wine and chocolate event at the shop? That sounds like fun...if you drink wine (which I don't). Again, the colours are stunning.

Les Petites Noirs 4

An example of the chocolate shop's recommended pairings. This set, including a Pinot Noir (I didn't notice the date) and 24 truffles, sells for around $70. Not a bad deal in my book.

Les Petites Noirs 3

Their display case is small, but it houses some interesting truffle flavours: Oak Chestnut, Lavender Vanilla, Chili Pepper, Apple Pie, and - no I am not making this up - Beet. Les Petites Noirs creates its chocolates to pair with wines. They taste local wines and pick up flavours in them that would make interesting truffles. They are happy to recommend wines to pair with their chocolates.

Les Petites Noirs 2

Upon entering the chocolate shop Les Petites Noirs, one is immediately greeted by a beautiful shade of turquoise. The shop's signature colours are this blue and the red you see on the boxes. as you might notice, this shop used to be a house and was renovated to become the chocolate shop. The shop itself is quite small; the rest of the house is used, I believe, to make the chocolate.

Les Petites Noirs

Les Petites Noirs is a gourmet chocolate shop in Milton-Freewater. It was featured in a Northwest travel magazine (I can't remember the name of it!) last year, along with chocolate shops in Spokane, Seattle, and Portland. I've visited this shop twice: once over a year and a half ago, and the second time just last week. This time I took pictures. It's a beautifully colourful shop located on Main Street (aka Highway 11) in Milton-Freewater. I hope you enjoy your tour of Les Petites Noirs this week.

Blue Mountain Mall

This...is the Walla Walla Valley's only mall. When I arrived in 2001 it was a pathetic excuse for a mall. It has only gotten worse. Currently the sign is only half correct; Sears and ShopKo are still there, but the Food Court and Gottschalks are long gone. Granted, our "food court" consisted of a pretzel and lemonade place and a Chinese food shop that may or may not have been laundering money. (We joke about that because no one could figure out how they stayed in business otherwise, and they had a sign up that they only accepted cash.) What you can see in this picture is actually a building separate from what used to be the mall. (The actual mall is behind this building.) A rich individual from California (or so I've heard) bought the property and was all set to fix it up...but this is the second time this has happened in the last five years and both times work was started and then abruptly ended without being completed. This building was supposed to be (at least partially) a Ross Dress for Less, but the sign saying "Coming Soon!" has started to fade over the months.

While the mall used to contain a hair salon, several jewelry stores, a health food place, a cutlery store, a Payless Shoe Source, a Bath & Body Works, a toy store, and a couple of other small things outside of the anchor stores listed on the sign above, they slowly closed, one by one, until all that was left was a jewelry store, the two food places, Sears, and ShopKo. Now all that is left is Sears and ShopKo, and you can't walk between them inside because the mall itself is closed and - if you could get to it to see it - open to the air outside because they knocked out several walls.

One of these days we may have a useful shopping area. Perhaps by the time my unborn children are in high school?

Andy's Market

One of the most popular grocery stores in the WWV is the Adventist-owned Andy's Market in College Place. By far the smallest, the market specializes in health foods, meat replacements, and bulk items. Adventists are well-known for their health message, which involves not eating meat, and just inside the door down that aisle you can see shelves of Adventist-made meat replacement products, made of soy. They are quite delicious - so long as you don't expect them to taste like real meat! What makes this grocery store unique is the fact that it closes during Sabbath hours. This means that half an hour before sundown on Friday (which changes throughout the year as days grow longer or shorter), someone stands outside the door with a large "CLOSED" sign so no one else will try to shop. They don't reopen until Sunday morning. This is a "slice of life" shot...regardless of the quality. It was taken last Friday afternoon.

By the way, some of you wanted to know more history on the abandoned church I posted a few days ago. I have since learned that it belongs to the son of a faculty member at Walla Walla U. He purchased it with the intention of fixing it up as a home, but recently no work has been done to it. Speculations are that it was discovered that fixing it up was going to be a much more involved undertaking than anyone expected. It is a rather old building.