Funny Story Friday: Our Honeymoon Dinner

We all have funny stories, don’t we? Silly things happen in life at which we might not immediately be able to laugh, but which are great stories to tell as the years pass and the sting wears off. While I do love fun and lively things, I tend to be a bit too serious for my own good. This is my attempt to look back at life and find the humor in it. As each week ends, let me regale you with my funny stories. Some may have to do with travel, some may not. Some may be long, some short. But all, I hope, will make you laugh, or at least smile. As I was thinking about which story to choose for this blog, the first one that popped into my head happened in Paris, on our honeymoon. I certainly wasn’t laughing the night it happened. David and I were blessed to travel to Paris and the Loire Valley on our honeymoon and it was a trip we will never forget. As we prepared for the trip, like most travelers, we used guide books to help us find good places to stay and eat. One book we used highly recommended a particular restaurant–I forget the name of the restaurant and for the sake of its owner, I’m not going to bother looking it up. After the wedding and our guests had departed, as I was checking out of the hotel, the woman behind the desk asked me where we were going on our honeymoon. I told her, and she immediately recommended I have dinner at the very restaurant where we had planned to go. I told her of the coincidence. “My ex-husband is the owner and chef,” she proudly beamed. Alarm bells should have gone off, but I was a giddy newlywed. “When you go,” she said, “tell him Linda said hello!” (that wasn’t her real name) I promised her I would, and went along my merry way. Days later, we were in Paris, having a glorious time. We walked to Notre Dame Cathedral, shopped for books in French we couldn’t read along the Seine, and prepared ourselves for the best meal ever in Paris at this highly recommended restaurant. When we walked into the restaurant later that night, the first night of our honeymoon, the chef himself came out to greet us. Why not? It was a tiny little place, and he seemed to be the chef and waiter of the restaurant. I immediately announced that Linda said hello! and he seated us.

Me at the restaurant. The chef is in the background.

Then he disappeared into the kitchen to prepare our meal, the quality of which I have completely forgotten. I don’t even know what I ate that night. Funny how memory works. Thank God for cameras, because David took a photo of our meal. After the chef served us, he disappeared again, only to reappear standing over our table with a handful of photos. “Give these to Linda,” he said, shoving them in my direction. Then he stormed off into the kitchen. I looked at them, confused. They were pictures of little boy and an older woman. It looked like family photos. “What the heck is this?!” I said to David, and handed him the photos. He looked at them, and after some discussion, we guessed that the chef must have assumed that we were there to spy on him for his ex-wife. They were having some kind of custody issues…? Who knew?! Words cannot explain how I felt. And unfortunately, try as I did to learn French before our trip, I certainly didn’t have the French words necessary to convince this paranoid little man that I was not there to spy on him, but had just happened met his ex-wife at a hotel where I had spent an evening. When he returned to our table, we did our best to tell him that we didn’t know his ex-wife, but he was having none of it, and kept pushing the photos at me. Clearly, he didn’t believe a word we said. We paid our bill, left the photos on the table, and walked out. I immediately started to cry. Welcome to Paris, I thought. Ugh. Welcome, indeed. When we returned from our honeymoon, I so desperately wanted to go and tell that woman never to recommend that restaurant again, and to stop telling people to tell her ex she said hello! But I didn’t. I think, instead, the next time I go to Paris, I’m going to have to see if that restaurant still exists. Maybe then I can have the first night honeymoon dinner I deserved instead of a Crazy Night in Paris. Rest assured, our honeymoon got much better. The next day, this meal completely wiped the memory of the Crazy Chef from our minds.

French cheese and Croque Monsiuers? YES, PLEASE!

French coffee and Onion Soup. It doesn’t get any better.

Well. At least it made me stop crying. Ah Paris! Je t’aime! For more photos from our wonderful honeymoon, where The Faithful Traveler was born, visit our photos page here. I’m smiling in all of them.