French food and Japanese bicycles at Moere-Numa Koen

Previously a garbage dump, now art

In Sapporo we have a park called Moere Numa Koen. This used to be a garbage dump, but at one time the city hired an artist to make this into a beautiful park instead. There are huge sculptures and pyramid shaped hills to climb, and it looks quite nice.

My friend wanted me to "look like a foreigner taking up lots of space" while we waited for our table to be prepared.

The park also has a French restaurant called Les enfants qui reve. I have been there once before, and went there again recently. Both times with the same friend. The restaurant is a bit expensive, but they serve very nice food. The dishes have many original ideas without feeling forced or becoming worse than the original dish.

After doing silly things while waiting around in the waiting room, we were led to our table by a young man. While we were walking to our table, my friend suddenly stopped and looked at the chairs of a table for 8 which had no cutlery or glasses and which some other waiter was wiping bread crumbs from. The guy leading us continued on towards a table set for two over by the window, but my friend started looking at the chairs with a confused face and a "Which chair should I sit on?"-expression. Since I was behind her in line, I had to stop too, so I pointed out the our table was probably the one the guy helping us was standing next to and pointing to over by the window, not this table. Despite being very clever, my friend has a knack for strange things like this (and it is not on purpose, she says), so it is always highly entertaining to hang out with her.

After eating, we also rented bicycles and took a ride around the park (which is huge). My friend is short and she was worried that she would not be able to ride the grownup sized bicycles. Apparently that was the case with rental bicycles when she lived in France. We asked if it was possible to rent a kid sized bicycle instead, but the woman handling the bicycles said that there was a weight limit too. When looking at the sign it said "Less than 40kg", which is not problem at all for my friend, though...

We rented two bicycles for grownups and they turned out to be tiny, so there was no problem.

The menu had something called "Raisin juice". How much juice can you get out of raisins?

A glass of raisin juice

Asparagus with edamame cream

Raw fish on mashed potatoes, served on a rock. Extremely good.

Four types of tomatoes, with frozen basil

Frozen corn soup (corn soup ice cream)

Hot corn soup poured on frozen corn soup, a great idea!

Two types of pork

In Sweden we eat a lot of "dill". This is dill ice cream, which I have never seen before. Good, though. The white stuff is chocolate.

The creme brulee was herb flavored (thyme?), which was also surprisingly good.

The bicycle renting ticket included a map of the park.

The restaurant is in the glass pyramid.

There are lots of weirdly shaped play grounds in the park.

My friend wanted to try the play ground, but since she is about half my weight, this swing did not work that well.