Paris part one - Food

Soooo.... Let's talk about Paris.

The flight in was slightly longer than the flight to England. Not surprising since Paris is an hour ahead of London. Getting to the city was more of a pain, though. It took nearly an hour to get from Charles de Gaulle airport to the Marais region, where I was staying.

The Marais region was weird. Most of the streets were cobblestone, and everywhere you looked was either a shop or a restaurant. I could have eaten lunch and dinner at a different place for every day I stayed if I wanted and still not have scratched the surface of the sheer number or restaurants available. In fact, I did eat out quite a bit, but I ate at home, too.

The apartment I stayed in was a tiny, two room place. It had a bedroom and an everything-else room. There was also a shower room and a room with a toilet; interesting that they were separate. The shower was a cramped, tiny box. Not much fun.

Near where I lived was a market and a supermarket. Not exactly sure what the difference was since they carried the same products, except the market was open about an hour later. Neither one carried much stock. Once I went there to get some milk, and they were entirely out.

French people seem to like to shop every day, because you couldn't get large quantities of food. The milk, for instance, came in liter-sized bottles that were empty after two bowls of cereal and two glasses (the cereal options sucked by the way; all sugary or flakey types only). But at least the milk was better than you get in England.

The restaurants were varied; you could get any kind of food from French (duh) to Italian, American, Chinese, Taiwanese, Cajun, Mexican, Turkish... Pretty much anything. At lunch time, waiters stand outside their restaurants and try desperately to get you to come inside. "Come on in! Look at our fabulous menu! Best pizza in Paris! Free glass of wine!" Wow.

The first place I ate at was awful. It looked nice, until I looked up and notice dust covered the lamps, the pictures, the tchochkeys hanging from the ceiling... EVERYTHING. And I don't mean a little dust. I mean a huge amount that clumped into dust balls and looked like if you shifted your weight it would fall right on your food. Gross. The food itself was really plain. I ordered the chicken and got just that: a leg of chicken, with absolutely no sauces or spices or anything on it. It did come with fries, though. In fact, nearly everything at these restaurants came with fries, which is probably why we call them French fries in the U.S. For desert I had vanilla ice cream, which of course turned out to be French vanilla. I half expected that though.

I had a crepe for lunch the next day, and that night I wanted pizza, so I went to an Italian place. Not such a great meal there, though. They wouldn't let me order a plain pizza because it wasn't on the menu. So I ordered a four cheese pizza instead. This is when I discovered I didn't like goat cheese. x.x

The next day for lunch I went to another Italian place, because I wanted a real pizza, god damn it. Fortunately this time I was able to get a plain pizza, and it was delicious.

The next night I had a steak. No big deal, but it was quite good. Unfortunately, "well done" doesn't mean the same thing to the French as it does over here, and the meat was still red and oozing with juices. But I ate it anyhow, and it was good. It came with fries, by the way.

The last restaurant I went to wasn't so great. I ordered a cheese covered steak. It sounded delicious. Unfortunately, the cheese turned out to be blue cheese. Yuck. I just ate the fries. I Love Lucy taught me that if you don't eat the food the way the French make it, they get mad at you. But actually what happened is the waiter took it away and brought me another, saying "This one is good! I promise you!". I just told him I wasn't hungry though. But unfortunately, using that excuse meant I couldn't order desert, and I really wanted to try this chocolate fondue on the menu ; ;

There was also one night I ate hot pockets at home. They're just like the British version, same company and everything. That is to say, it's actually a different company than those from the U.S. The U.S. ones are much better, too. I did buy a raspberry tart for desert, though, and that was pretty good.

Next time I'll talk about the stuff I actually did :P