Lunching At The Exquisite Musee d"Orsay
By traveltripz on Mar 3, 2007 in Paris, France, Europe
We had been walking around for a few hours and it came to lunchtime. Now up until now we had been quite frugal with our meals. But when we saw the restaurant in the Musee d’Orsay we couldn’t resist it.
So off we went and paid some astronomical amount of money to lunch in style.
Well things didn’t quite go without a hitch. I ordered a steak - medium well if you please. A rather gorgeous French waiter placed my plate in front of me, with a well rehearsed florish.
And I nearly puked. The thing looked like it was going to jump off the plate and start mooing. ( I know a gross exaggeration here). So I called the waiter over and pointed out that the steak was raw, this was a bit of a comedy really as I don’t speak French and he didn’t speak English ( or if he did, wasn’t letting on).
So here comes the second round of steak and lo and behold, it’s hardly any better than the first 
one. Again the parody continues, and then the third steak arrived, actually this one was the second one having been burnt and buggered beyond recognition of anything other than boot leather. By this time Iwas starving and didn’t care what they might have done to the steak out in the kitchen. Yes I have heard all those stories too about what happens when you return a meal.
So we sat and chatted and drank in the elegant surroundings while I chewed on my leather like steak. I can’t remember what Paula had, but I know she enjoyed it. I am sure it wasn’t steak.
There are, on average, in excess of two and half million visitors to the Musee d’Orsay each year.
And that brings me to another incident. After lunch we decided to visit the powder room to freshen up. So we are standing in a very long queue with ladies of all nationalities, waiting to go to the loo, just looking around when we noticed that we were outside the mensroom. And on the wall is a great big mirror in a gorgeous gilt frame, facing back into the mens room and there they all are at the urinal. Well of course it didn’t matter that none of us could understand the other, we all knew what we were looking at, and lots of sniggers, laughter and knowing looks ensued.
Nothing like seeing someone else in an embarrassing position to break down language barriers.
So off we went to finish the rest of the museum. Don’t miss this when you are next in Paris. All the splendour is a feast for the eyes and senses.
2 Comment(s)
By jon144k.com on Mar 31, 2007 | Reply
haha yes , this is close to my experience with eating in europe.
in germany, i had some jellied, cold meat (?), because i couldn’t read anything on the menu, and so just pointed & ordered.
By WSPC on Apr 2, 2007 | Reply
Lol.It certainly is an experience when eating overseas, we had some really interesting stuff in Venice. I ordered battered fish, thinking of how it is presented back home, nice fillets of fish in a light batter. These were small whole fish just deep fried, head and all. I don’t think they had even been gutted. Ugh