Lenôtre, Tartelette Marron

Sunday, I considered going to a new place, but Route 99 is my top priority, and they are closed Sunday's, so I went with a "new" place in the sense that I haven't reached my target number of cakes since their introduction or promotion: three shops like that, but also three shops that I'm stalled for lack of new cakes and one that I'm waiting for them to reopen after renovations (so I'm probably covered for the next couple weeks). After my morning appointment, I bicycled to Ginza Mitsukoshi and got cake from Lenôtre, which topped the list. I went with Tartelette Marron, which is seasonal. It was late enough when I got home that I went ahead and had lunch and my cake before further exercise. This is my seventh cake. The best one's so far have all be chocolate, but they don't seem to introduce new ones of those, which is discouraging. This was good and definitely high quality, but not really enough to justify the high prices. It looks like this new shop is officially no longer new and has settle in as an exceptional shop. It should still have have at least one more cake-off round this year, so it might get another chance sooner than some in its category.

I decided that I needed to get more done today than yesterday, and I was running later, so I didn't review the 22 km route, but just went by bicycle down to try the updated Daikanyama-chou--Ebisunishi--Hachiyama-chou--Nanpeidai-chou--Sakuragaoka-chou--Sarugaku-chou--Shibuya--Uguisudani-chou loop, this time during daylight, so I could get some photos of the new places I added. I also found a second-floor macaron shop on the route, as well as moved on the fly the route around Daikanyama Station, because the Daikanyama Station was on the otherside of the road. I twas tricky to do and maintain other nearby parts and I had to use stairs up to the station, justifying that they also stairs up to the crosswalk across the street. I explored the shopping center and found a Picards that has a cafe space and sells croissants for 100 yen (they must sell something else to eat in, since there were several people in the eat-in space, but it was not clear to me what). Also, I found Chez Lui inside, which is redundant, since they are also across to street on the other side, but counts a site. This time, I managed to get everything right, so maybe tomorrow I'll do clockwise. However, I also explored near my Shibuya central loop. I knew about the Starbucks and couldn't find the shrine that Google was suggesting, but when I went back to make a new loop just for Starbucks, I realized the old Shibuya central loop didn't make any sense to begin with (I'm not sure that's even what I practiced before), but I'm able to make a new one using two bridges that covers the Starbucks and the nearby church. Actually, it shaved off 10 m from passing through that area too, so it's all good, except now that's actually the new top priority, so maybe I'll also that tomorrow. Tuesday, I hope to tackle practicing the big loop again.