A Good End to a Bad Day

M

MLipton

Mark Lipton
As alluded to elsewhere, today will not go down as one of my favorites and in fact will vie for the title of Most Fucked Up Ever. Nonetheless, even a bad day can be salvaged with a little bit of luck and a lot of will (and cash). First good thing to happen after I found myself unexpectedly in Paris (not a Bad Thing in itself, mind you) 6 hours ahead of planning was that it gave me time to shop for Jean, something that up until this point had proved difficult to say the least. A stroll down Rue Lafayette from Gare du Nord eventually brought me to the twin consumer Meccas of Galeries Lafayette and Printemps. After a careful perusal of both palaces of consumption, I finally found a Provenal-styled tablecloth at Printemps that satisfied my urge to placate SHMBO when venturing to France unescorted. Then, the capstone of the day was a good meal and decent wine right around the corner from my oh-so-unprepossesing hotel at the Brasserie Terminus du Nord. With the "L'Ardoise du Jour" of 1) a salad of smoked salmon, chevre and spinach; 2) grilled dorade on a risotto in saffron sauce; and 3) tartlette of pears in an almond crust I had a half bottle of 2005 Veronique Chereau-Gunther "Grand Fief de la Cormeraie" Muscadet Sevre et Maine Sur Lie wasn't too communicative in the nose, showing a little characteristic minerality and some citrusy hints, but on the palate it proved to be quite fruity, with an off-dry feel and lime and just enough acidity to keep it from being flabby. Not a profound Muscadet by any stretch, but a very decent wine with my dinner and a much better end to the day than what came before it.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Glad to hear that you are still able to find silver linings.

PS. SWMBO
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Pfft. That extra pour of Muscadet from an open BTG bottle obviously went straight to my head (where else would it go, you might ask).

Mark "Mlon-Head" Lipton
 
originally posted by Thor:
So we're not going to get details? (Implied series of unrelated punctuation marks goes here.)
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I hadn't really intended to trot out the litany of things that went wrong today as a public pity party, so I'll give you all the Cliff Notes version and forward you the detailed list of crap I sent to Sharon if you really, really want it (it's not that interesting and let's be serious: it doesn't even begin to compare to the day I came home from college and listened to my father explain that he was dying of Lou Gehrig's Disease).

So, short version: taxi stuck in traffic in Lyon, miss TGV to Paris, cascading delays leading to lost chance to visit friend in Normandy where he had set aside 10 wines to open for me, including an '88 Beaucastel and some rare treasures from his region of the Touraine. There's also the two frozen wheels on the suitcase, the wrong number, the inability to get an Internet connection in Gare de Montparnasse, starvation and thirst, but that's about the size of it. All in the day of an itinerant winegeek.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by David M. Bueker:
Could be worse. You could have been stuck eating in the UK.
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Hey, I had some very good meals in the UK (part of my trip was spent there, too). I just don't eat "haute cuisine" in England, nor do I traditionally partake of local wines there.

Mark Lipton
 
I think I have only ever had 2 good meals in the UK. One was prepared by Jamie Goode. The other was simple roast chicken.

All the rest has been crap.
 
All the rest has been crap.
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You should go where Theresa goes.

Mark, that was enough detail, thanks. I've had a day or two like that (the one in France, not -- thankfully -- the one with your father).

I think Theresa beat me last year, though, when her flight -- that was supposed to leave Rome a safe two hours before planned strikes -- got cancelled due to a different union deciding to go on sympathetic strike a little early, and she had to get herself to Luxembourg before the next morning without being able to use Alitalia or the already-on-strike Italian trains. The highlight of the day, for me, was searching for LuxAir flights out of Torino while she was sprinting to the domestic terminal to get a tiny Alitalia flight that, oddly, was neither canceled nor full, and sending her the details of the searches in 100-character chunks, because SMS was the only way I could stay connected with her.
 
originally posted by Thor:
I think Theresa beat me last year, though, when her flight...
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Yes, it can certainly get worse. In my experience, our family vacation to (among elsewhere) Paris and Prague in Summer '68 comes to mind as one particularly fraught with problems. I have yet to get to Prague, as a matter of fact. Today, it's off to London by Eurostar and back to the states. I'll stop channeling bad karma right now, I think.

Mark Lipton
 
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