gay (gray?) paris!

after getting to the airport from the city center of rome, and checking in, i made my plane with just about no problems. security was very easy, and continues to probably be the easiest i've endured of all my travels, and i found my gate relatively quickly. after a flight (of which i undoubtedly slept through), i had landed in paris!

thanks, sort of, to the parisian metro system you can get into the city's center by connecting a couple lines. both good and bad. good since you don't need a separate way of getting into the center, but bad as it does start you off pretty far out and isn't 100% direct. after my metro trip, i hopped out onto to the street to be greeted by my soon-to-be constant companion in paris -- the cold.

think "going snowboarding/skiing/to the snow right when you first get out of the car and don't have proper clothing," only without any snow, cold. and of course, gray.

so i walked (the map made it seem pretty short, it turned out to be short-ish), to my hotel and checked in to wait for the arrival of my cousin - james, my other companion for the trip. after about an hour, he found the place and we were settled in to go out and start our hunt for dinner as we were both hungry and tired from a long day's travels.

we finally settled on a place nearby the hotel and instead of going with the 'steak frites' option, we did a "andouillette" sausage and frites. it was described as a "chitterling sausage with fried potatoes" which, literally, on paper sounded pretty good. i have had andouille and knew that french sausage is more often than not good, and plus - neither of us have encountered a sausage we didn't like.

until this one.

with the term 'chitterling' as the tell-tale sign of what to expect, we bravely ordered. i figured the word, which i had no concrete definition of, had to be similar to crackling as in maybe cooked until the casing split, aka ideal. this sounded great as i am generally a fan of "well done" meat items, and a big fan of meats in casings. but boy was this not what i had hoped. the casing was rubbery and did not cut well, or pretty much at all. the interior mass was of bits of pork and a general brown mash (which is never a good sign with meat, as i've learned with the possible fried brain incident in rome).

its taste was both sour and unpleasant. it squeaked as you chewed and was only kept down by the fact that you could not think about what you just ate. james managed to get the whole thing down and i was lucky enough to keep down about a third before calling it quits and heading for the (thank god) frites and bit of salad that was included.

after the meal we asked the waiter and learned that this 'delicacy' (big red flag right there) was made of pork tripe. fantastic!

so we left and headed off to see the eiffel tower, since it was a mellow activity that would allow us to get to bed at a reasonable time in order for me to get healthy, at this point i definitely had a cold, and get up early for sightseeing.