Last night in Paris, we walked all around the city. We returned to the Tour Eiffel, the Pantheon and the Catacombs. The catacombs were crazy! So many bones, so little time. It is really creepy walking down 124 steps into this underground world and then being immersed in a pathway surrounded by thousands of bones. I got some great photos which I hopefully will put online some time soon.
Paris is still cold and cloudy, bleecch! We are heading down to Bonne and Burgogne to go biking as a family with Pierre Parent. Unfortunately, the luggage still hasn't come, so our parents will be having a great time riding around in Ila and my clothes. And we won't all match in our Burgogne Bike Brigade t-shirts... sadly, only Ila and I have ours.
So to the main event of this blog: Dinner last night.
It was awful.
First of all, it took us about 30 minutes to pick which restaurant we wanted. Dad wanted one off the main street so it was quieter. I wasn't picky, but I wanted a place I would be able to eat something small. We settled on this out of the way restaurant called the Bonne Table. Since we had been sight-seeing all day and my parents didn't have any other clothes, we didn't exactly look nice. The host sat us with only a few french looks of disdain.
The restaurant resembled a funeral parlor. Everything was pink with cherry wood. There was only 1 other couple in the place when we sat down. Ila joked the restaurant was just a cover for the mafia and then man scurried to the back to tell the people, "Oh no! We have people here! We have to serve them food!"
So, after a few minutes of mulling over what we wanted, we finally got the attention of the host. He was also the only waiter. At this point, there was only 3 other people in the entire place but he was furiously running around as if it were packed. We weren't sure what a few of the choices were on the menu so we asked him. And good lord, you would have thought we had asked him to run a marathon carrying a watermelon barefoot in the desert. He gave us short answers, then finally took our order and asked us each several times what we wanted. Not to get it right, but he was just not paying attention.
So, then we wait. And wait. He brought out our bottle of wine, opened it, and promptly left. He didn't pour it. So then we were confused. We were locked in a battle of stubbornness. We didn't want to pour it, but we felt silly waiting to do it if we were meant to ourselves. Every time he walked by our table he stringently avoided eye contact as if he were disgusted to look at us. When we thought it couldn't get any worse, we asked for water. Well actually, we had ordered it with our main meal but he regretted to bring it.
So finally, he has a free moment, yeah right, and goes to get us water. Up front. And brings back this tiny little carafe which I think was meant to water the plants out front. We were all laughing so hard we had to bite our lips.
Then the main meal came. Mom had ordered a sausage thing, Dad got seabass, I ordered steak and Ila had duck.
He placed our meals in front of us by starting at one end of the table and reaching over the person sitting directly under him to give the person to their left their food. Example: He served my mom her pork. Then, staying in the same spot, he reached across her and plopped my dad's seabass down. Good lord.
Now on to the comments on the food. My beef sucked. It tasted blah. But its okay, because my mom and I were both served extra helpings of potatoes? My dad's seabass was... petite. Imagine 38g of fish. Yeah. And Ila's managed to be okay. She really liked it.
Halfway through eating this stuff, I smelled something. And I have an intense sense of smell. It was overwhelming. Poop was radiating through the restaurant. I thought a pipe must have burst and raw sewage was flowing under our feet. So, naturally, I told my family, "I smell poop!" And Ila all of the sudden smells it as well. I am just starting to get alarmed when my mother sheepishly looks up and says, "It's okay. It's just my food."
Oh. my. god.
I didn't know food could smell that bad! Turns out, what appeared to be sausage was something closer to Poop Pork. And we looked at her plate and though the food was cut up, it didn't look like she had managed to eat anything. And my mom is not a picky eater at all! So, I was laughing so hard I was crying and so was the entire table. I am sure the host/waiter hated us by this point. In fact, I'm pretty sure there were open looks of disgust being shot our way. Surprisingly, the other French people in the restaurant didn't seem to mind us.
The next course was cheese and I thought I would get a nice brie, and maybe Camembert. Turns out, I ordered stinky ear wax. So, I couldn't eat it, but my family liked it. Then as my Dad continued to eat, my mom was talking about other cheese. She mentioned, just as Ellwyn took a huge bite, that she remembered some Chevre cheese used to be wrapped in Pigeon dung. Well, that set us off again.
Picture the scene: Ellwyn choking and coughing in this quiet restaurant while the french host glares at us across the way. We weren't being that loud but we were still angering him.
Finally the dessert came, and it was delicious. The service continued to suck as we asked for another bottle of water, and it never came.
Mom and I left early to go over to Pierre's to pick up our stuff and apparently the bill situation was just as awful as the rest of the meal. Puke.
Oh wait, and then on the way home, Ila got sick and threw up when we made it back to the apartment. I want meals to be memorable here, but good lord. It was the worst one of my life. Way to go, Bonne Table.
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