Backpacking, camping, and vegan-ing my way through France

Since I started my camping through France vacation, things have gotten way harder. For one, I thought the challenge was ending the 22nd (I was mixing up the 22 day challenge with the date the 22nd....my Peruvian and English campmates are not going to be happy - as even me being vegan has been a challenge for them since we are cooking many of our meals together while camping -.- They have been quite supportive helping me find the right foods and ingredients, although at times annoyed with the restrictions haha). As soon as I got to France things just got all the more difficult. If I thought attending all day work conferences in London was difficult with the challenge, I had no idea it was about to get way more challenging. We are roadtripping from the north coast of France in a village called Wissant, heading to the West coast today near Isson, France, and then onto the West Coast and then the South of France. Not having cheese in France has been quite a temptation, as Brie and Camembert cheeses are my favorite cheeses, not to mention the language barrier has made things drastically more difficult. I imagine in Paris or other major cities it wouldn't be so hard, as there are many restaurant options and it is easier to find someone who speaks English. In the tiny villages along the coast, we are staying in tiny villages and for the most part have been the only English speakers. Many of the menus are loaded with meat and lots of seafood dishes, and finding even vegetarian options has been a struggle. After two weeks on the vegan diet and there has been 3-4 times (update: this has been 10-11 times) I've had to order/eat french fries for a meal as it was the only option. I have definitely gone hungry on more than one occasion, and also passed on many nice looking meal options only to be left with a simple base soup or french fries. It's been quite disheartening actually. When I was at home a lot, cooking and making my own meals wasn't too much of a problem, or even communicating my diet at restaurants, but with a French speaking waitress and no "vegan friendly" options, I cant even try to make a custom order, meaning I'm left with literally french friend, potatoes, or a vegetable soup that is hopefully vegan (there is no way to know officially).

Day 11

4-18-2018

Day 11 was the start of my conference and also the day when I was giving my presentation. Again I didnt have any breakfast foods at my hosts, but I figured the conference would have a breakfast buffet or table as they usually do. When I arrived to the conference, I meandered my way around (it was kind of an unorganized event), trying to track down the organizers and after running around over an hour finally accomplished checking in and handing off my presentation. By 11am I found my way to the speakers lounge. To my disappointment, there was only a small selection of pastries, with no labels specifying what they were. I was starving at this point, picked two of the pastries that looked the least likely to contain cream or milk or cheese, and scarfed them down.

As a speaker, I had a free food voucher to use at the conference, although there were only a few stands set up inside the event so you can imagine the vegan options were limited. I did manage to find one stand with a roasted pepper and vegan cheese sandwich to my surprise (and delight). It was mostly bread:( but it was nice to have a hot sandwich on this challenge! I paired the heavy carb vegan sandwich with a type of veggie mash containing white beans, parsley, and tomatos.

Later that day we left the conference and since the weather was so nice (it felt like summer!) we decided to walk the hour and a half back to the apartment instead of taking the train. On the way we picked up some Indian food takeaway and ate it when we arrived back. Most of their dishes were not vegan friendly, but they told me two hot dish were, which was a potato spinach curry and a mix of chickpeas. I love Indian food so was super happy we found this place!

Day 12

4-19-2018
I had my handy breakfast bar upon waking up early, and even though I had the conference again today, I didnt make lunch there as I had a couple of meetings in London city center for work. My colleague was nice enough to schedule our lunch meeting at a vegan-friendly place which had a nice vegan/vegetarian buffet option. Everything was really delicious and all the plates were a complicated mix of recipes, so I sampled a lot of them and tried to take pictures of the names so you could get an idea of the recipe:)

After our lunch meeting we had a 3 hour meeting about structuring our upcoming token launch, and we decided to eat again and reconvene about the meeting. Unfortunately they didnt pay me the favor again today, as the group decided on a typical English pub restaurant, where the only vegan dishes are sides of french fries and fried onions. Although I like both of those things, they're quite unhealthy and I dont usually eat many carbs and dont like to for my diet.

Day 13

4-20-2018

Today I was leaving London for Cambridge, UK and then to meet my friends family in a small town called Ely. Before I left early in the morning I grabbed a granola bar, and then headed towards my train leaving from Kings Cross, but I wanted to leave enough time to explore the area by station. It was home of the famous Happy Potter Platform 9 and 3/4, as well as a beautiful area where you could sit by the canal and watch boats pass by. I grabbed a strawberry banana smoothie, a slice of vegan bread, an avocado on toast (forgot to photograph the toast before I scarfed it down haha), and played guitar in the sun by the water until it was time to leave to catch my train to Cambridge.

This is the lovely spot where I had brunch:)

When I arrived to Cambridge I decided to walk around and explore the city, and after about an hour or so I started looking for something vegan friendly. I passed English pub after English pub, which are typically very meat-heavy, and by the time I happened upon The Rainbow Cafe in a very touristy part of the city, I was too hungry to care that the prices were a little high. Regardless, I enjoyed couscous based dish called Tagine L'Algerienne and a side salad with water to drink and was off again exploring the city.

A few hours later of walking around the city I was pretty exhausted a little hungry, so I bought two boxes of fresh raspberries from a market in the city center (only 1 euro each!), and found a nice park to sit, play guitar, and have a little raspberry picnic by myself.

I spent about an hour or two in the park until around 6pm my friends sister picked me up from the city center and drove me the 20 minutes to Ely, where their family lives and runs a small Animal Experience Center (lots of snakes, rodents, owls, retiles, meerkats, and of course an array of farm animals). It was my first time meeting them and they didnt know about my diet, so they had prepared a meal which was mostly things I couldn't eat (an ensemble of meats and cheeses mostly). I felt bad not being able to partake in their dinner, but we did manage to muster up some french fries I could dip in hummus (I ate most of the jar -.-). It was disappointing to have another meal of just french fries, and my body has definitely not felt as active probably due to the high intake of carbs (in which case I normally don't have nearly any).

Day 14

4-21-2018

We woke up around 6am to leave early for our trip to France. I grabbed a banana before rushing out the door (forgot to document), and when we finally arrived at the train channel station (its a train that you drive your car into and it drives underground from England to Calais, France). We missed our departure due to a mixup in times and had to wait a couple of extra hours. I spent that time catching up on my vegan challenge blogging, and ate a proper meal at a health fast food restaurant in the waiting area. The only vegan friendly option on their menu was porridge with blueberries and an assortment of seeds with honey, so I asked them to leave the honey out and voila! - vegan breakfast:)

This one is taken with my passport which I had to have handy for crossing the border from England to France.

After arriving to France and reuniting with one of my dearest friends (and my roommate I used to live with in Peru), we all went out for lunch. There werent many restaurants open at that time but we found one that had "vegetarian" options, which it was hard to read since the menus were all in French.

The waitress had to come back several times for my order and we tried communicating but I'm terrible with french and she was trying to explain their vegetarian burger couldn't be made without cheese ( I think ) haha, so the only option was a veggie wrap which is what I ended up getting;p The veggie wrap was pretty good, but wasnt quite filling enough, and of course the only option was to add fries. More fries, smh -.- ....and a salad that consisted of three pieces of lettuce haha;p

Before leaving the city of Calais, we stopped at a grocery store and stocked up on meals we could cook while camping. My friends were very gracious at considering my diet, and we bought cans of lentils, ratatouille, and of course bread, but were quite limited as we didnt have a cooler, so could only carry things that would last for a few days without needing refrigerated. After driving for a few hours, we arrived to our first campsite, all nearby a beautiful lake and ocean beaches. We set up our tent and by the time it was done, we were ready for dinner. We opened a bottle of French champagne, another bottle of red wine, and cooked ratatouille for dinner, which we paired with a baguette.

And so begins the first day of our camping in France adventure while vegan! Its going to get crazy from here.....

As you can see, from here on out the pictures and presentation are going to drop off the map drastically, as we are camping in tents and cooking on a little portable gas stove, and eating off of plastic plates while driving around all of France. I'll try to mix in some fun traveling pictures in lieu of the poor food photography ;p

Here's our tent, with my dear friend Karen and her fiance Chris setting it up (I helped too!)

Day 15

4-22-2018

I wanted to first document some of the groceries we bought the day before. And for breakfast we opened a large can of lentils, added pepper and salt, and ate it with the leftover baguettes.

We walked around the village we were staying in, Wissant (in the north coast of France), and most places were closed (French restaurants and stores often close in the afternoon for a "siesta"), so we lingered around until 6:00pm when a restaurant owner finally let us sit down and take a look at the menu. Of course there were not many vegetarian friendly options, as this was a coastal village and much of the menus were seafood driven. We tried to communicate with the waitress, but again were limited by the language. The only thing that looked vegan friendly was a vegetable soup ("legumes" in french), and yet again - french fries -.-
I tried making a custom order of a few sides of just veggies but the waitress could not understand what I meant, so we settled on a safe bet of the veggie soup.

Overall I was just tired of not having many options and getting weighed down by lots of carbs that I don't normally eat. I went home still hungry and a little disappointed in the limited options I had and the fact that the meal wasn't very good or filling. Sighhh. I had a snack later on that night by eating a few small pieces of baguette and a granola bar and didnt have the heart to document. The shift since camping in France has started affecting my mood a little, but I (mistakenly) was excited for the challenge to be finishing the next day (oh, woe is me). On to the next day!

You can read more about the challenge here:
https://steemit.com/contest/@heart-to-heart/eatlikeasuperstar-100sbd-giveaway-challenge-starts-now

Are you vegan? Have you ever thought about being vegan? I would love feedback and to know that I'm doing right or any improvements I can make, or suggestions for recipes. I'm not big on cooking but I will try to do a few things for this vegan challenge :)