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.
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.