Halfway To Beef Tartare

After eating bad food in Rouen, Saint-Aubin-Sur-Mer, and Mont-Saint-Michel, we resorted back to eating at McDonald’s for our past few meals – I know it’s horrible for you, but at least the food is consistent!  Tonight, however, we tried the restaurant at the Holiday Inn (because Paul needed Internet and our hotel’s wasn’t working), and we were happily reminded of how good French food can be!  I think it’s been a week since a meal made me go “mmmm…” like this!

We’re currently spending our second night in Caen, a commune in the Normandy region of France.  We arrived yesterday evening, after our stop in Saint-Malo, but haven’t really accomplished much because we’re both tired from the weekend of driving and city-hopping. I initially wanted to see Le Mémorial de Caen, but you need to allot a good chunk of time to visit this World War II museum (it’s outside of the city and quite large) and there was no way we were waking up early enough to head out to the memorial and get back before 4, when Paul starts working. It might have been possible to make it to the museum for an hour, but the entrance fee is 16.50 euros so it didn’t seem worth it to go and only see a small part of the museum.  Instead, we checked out the Abbaye aux Dames and Abbaye aux Hommes (where William the Conqueror’s tomb is), right in the city center.  Neither church was very impressive, but they’re listed as two of the top attractions for Caen, leading me to think there’s not much to see in Caen, apart from Le Mémorial. 

After returning the rental car at the train station and walking back to the hotel, we found out Paul wouldn’t be able to work from our hotel (the Hôtel Bristol de Caen, which by the way isn’t worth their regular rack rate of 70 euros per night but we got a special rate of 50 euros) and decided to go eat at the Holiday Inn, where Paul can use his AT&T account to get wi-fi.  I ordered a fish mousseline (which is like a fish cake covered in a hollandaise-type sauce) and some kind of fowl dish, while Paul got beef tartare “our-way” – which meant it was partially cooked (like a hamburger patty that’s raw in the middle) and topped with an egg.  We’ve been meaning to try beef tartare ever since we saw it in Lyon, but we haven’t had the courage to order completely raw meat, so we consider this a baby step before we go all the way!  The version of tartare we had tonight was actually very very good, so we’re hoping we will be just as thrilled when we finally try real beef tartare in Paris, our next destination