The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of EuropePrime, Samuel Irenæus
History
The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe
Prime, Samuel Irenæus
Europe -- Description and travel
kept hot by the lamp; and every little nick-nack that delicate taste and
an appreciating sense of what comfort is would be likely to suggest.
I am asked, before retiring, at what hour I will breakfast, and I reply,
“When the family do; and let every thing be as you are in the habit of
having it.”
The times of eating and the food were not to my taste the first day. It
took me a little while to get adjusted to the change. But in every
country I would live as the well-to-do people of the country live. And
here I soon learned that the number of meals and the hours of eating
were regulated by the climate, which is so bracing as to indicate
frequent eating and substantial diet. I am writing this at ten o’clock
at night, and I will give you the journal of the day.
Breakfast at 7½ A.M., consisting of coffee, bread and butter, with honey
and cold meat.
Dinner at 12, noon, soup, fish, boiled beef, beef _à la mode_,
vegetables, salads, cucumbers, apricots, pears, plums, apples,
preserves, pastry, &c.
Lunch at 4 P.M., coffee, bread and butter and honey. Everybody takes
this meal as well as the others. They come in from the fields and the
shops to their coffee at 4.
Supper at 8 P.M. I am almost ashamed to say that at 8 this meal was
served in my parlor, for me only: soup and a roast chicken, which
disappeared, leaving scarce a wreck behind. And I forgot to say that at
six o’clock I took tea out with a private family in the village, where
the table was spread with the richest cream, butter, strawberries,
currants, bread, and honey,—all but the tea being the fruit of the
gentleman’s own grounds. And at my table there were presented several
dishes not enumerated above, the names of which were worse than Greek,
and the compound of a color and odor that did not enlist my sympathies.
However, I try a little of every thing, and eat all the time. I
understand there is a doctor in the village, whose fame extends to
distant cities, and ere the week is out I may have to test his skill.
IN THE HOTELS AND ON THE ROAD.
It is one thing to travel in a country, stopping only at the great
hotels, and quite another to get off the highways, among the people, and
live as they live. At the hotels, the aim is to give you the kind and
quality of food you are accustomed to in your own land, to put you into
a good bed, and charge you just as much as you will pay. It is my way,
when I can, to get out of the beaten paths of travel, and mingle, if
possible, with the natives of the country, and those, too, who are not
in the habit of entertaining strangers, and soon learning that they are
fair game to be plucked as long as they have any feathers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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