FOOD

Although I am not sure if it is because it was less expensive food or because they offered free wifi, but I ate at McDonald's more during our month in Europe than I have in over two years in the states. It is always interesting to see how the menu is different from country to country and Europe definitely has its own unique options. In general the stores were well designed and felt much nicer than in the US, and the menu had what I perceived to be more gourmet options.

I also visited many local cafes and restaurants as well. In these experiences I found both the stereotypical poor European service and the very helpful nice experiences as well. One of the funniest examples of this is when we went for mussels with Dr. Shahidi on Sunday night in Belgium. For both lack of hunger and to share costs the six students decided to share the meal. When it came time to order our waiter got worked up and looked away in disgust explaining that he could not do it. I'm not sure why the shift came, but we got a new waiter who ended up being far more helpful, but by far the worst dining experience I had was on our l

ast day at Disneyland Paris, where I was again with Dr. Shahidi. We were confronted with horrible food that must have spent at least a few days under a heat lamp, a lady behind the counter that was unhelpful if not incompetent, and a manager that was totally clueless as to anything customer service oriented.

Overall, I tried to eat something important to each area, crepes in France; mussels, frites, and gaufres in Belgium; gellato and pizza in Italy; and raclette and lots of chocolate in Switzerland. I can honestly say I loved all of those, but my favorite is raclette. I really enjoyed how fresh all of the food was and that a lot of it was natural food that wasn't over processed.