Working my way backward through meals eaten, I’ll mention our sojourn in France first. After stuffing ourselves with amazingly good raspberries and peaches, as well as cheese fondue, in Geneva, we departed for Lyon with our college friend Chris and her family.

Seeing how our first visit to France on this trip was accidental, yet still yielded tasty food at the buffet of the stranded-air-travelers hotel, and this time we were visiting the real gastronomic heart of France on purpose, I had high hopes. The trip was also on short notice, so I quickly culled restaurant recommendations and names of local must-try dishes from reputable Internet sources like eGullet, as well as from the slimmest of French acquaintances.

The first night we headed out to the nearest recommendation to our hotel, La Machonnerie. It was August 1, so that very morning, apparently, the Vacation Rapture had happened. Vieux Lyon was empty, and so was the restaurant, except for an older couple with their dog.

When I expressed interest in trying the most traditional items, the friendly chef/host began to sell me in French, and I gave up trying to translate, and just put my faith in him. Chris leaned over and murmured, “That’s brains, you know.” What the heck–I’ve got nothing against brains, and if I’m going to eat them, I may as well eat them in France, right? I nodded and smiled at the chef.

As we neared the main course, anticipation–and jokes–were mounting at the table. Juan had gotten the hard sell on the tablier de sapeur, some special preparation of tripe. Fellow eaters who’d ordered based on what sounded good, rather than Lyon reputation, got their duck breasts and sausages and lentils. Juan’s plate arrived, looking like an innocuous bit of, essentially, tripe schnitzel. Finally my dish came, last, with great fanfare, ladled like a big cauliflower out of a cast iron pot of steaming broth. A beady-eyed crawdad sat next to it, egging me on with its little claws.

I was grossly full from my previous course of fried pig foot (the fat goes great on bread!). But I dug into my dish, surprised by the texture, and slightly puzzled by the crayfish broth, which didn’t seem like the most logical companion for veal brains. I managed to eat about half of my weird white orb, and then sat back, sweating, while everyone else chowed down on succulent duck breast, sausages, and incredibly savory lentils.

The next day, when we were in Les Halles, which had also experienced the Vacation Rapture, the one food shop that was open was selling shrink-wrapped quenelles, which is what I’d had the night before. They looked nothing like brains, and in fact seemed to contain some sort of seafood. And then right next to it was a big tub of the local specialty cervelles de canut, which is some cheese thing that I knew meant, literally, “silk-weaver’s brains.”

Oh. Duh. Cervelles. Quenelles. I’d spent a whole dinner thinking I was eating some exotic bit of animal, and really I was just hacking away at a giant fish dumpling.

So the next night, we go to another neighborhood joint. I’d read somewhere that Chez Bobosse was a reputable local producer of a Lyonnaise specialty called andouillette, so when I saw that on the menu, the choice was clear. Some kind of artisanal sausage would be just the antidote for my brain/not-brain experience from the night before.

Again, my plate arrives last. It’s a sizzling cast-iron gratin dish, about one-quarter occupied by a stubby little sausage-like form bathed in a mustard sauce. And it smells exactly like the Metro station we just walked past to get to the restaurant. Which is to say: like pee.

I can’t remember the last time I was simply unable to eat something. Out of politeness and general optimism, I will try whatever is placed in front of me. And I gamely tried my andouillette, despite its toxic smell. Even swathed in huge lashings of mustard sauce, it tasted like pee–or what I would imagine pee to taste like.

And it was a rather odd sausage: its filling was not ground up, but more just long shreds of things loosely gathered together in a casing that was quite stretchy and gummy. It was a uniform grayish color. Even after I managed to choke down about half of it, its evil smell continued to waft up, and I had to gulp my wine to counteract it. I walked home feeling exceptionally nasty.

The next day I stuck to recognizable pastries and sandwiches, and the day after that, I looked andouillette up online. Turns out it’s all pig intestine: chitlins wrapped up in more chitlins.

I just had no idea the French could do me so wrong. I know the French eat a lot of odd parts of animals, and I respect that. But I just assumed they know what they’re doing, and actually make those odd parts delicious.

In fact, though, I now see that even French cuisine includes things that fall under the category of “acquired taste.” All those people on eGullet who were gushing about andouillette must either have been fed the stuff from birth, or are really just huge Francophile posers who lord their tolerance of obscure foods over those with allegedly more pedestrian tastes. What I can’t understand is why I would ever cultivate a taste for something that makes me think of a subway tunnel on a hot day.

I was just about to compare these hook-line-and-sinker Franco-freaks to those people who speak rapturously about how phenomenal sea urchin is. But then I remembered I had some really amazing sea urchins in Greece–and that’s a separate story.