So far, the place where we’re staying is proving to be far less impressive than the places we’ve stayed at before. “Ma Maison” is, at best, a mediocre hotel.

Some thing are nice: they have an indoor swimming pool (if you enjoy that), the rooms are spacious, and the service is very good. However, that is offset by the fairly disappointing food, the bad towels, the minimal water pressure, and outside the pool, the lack of anything to do if you have no car.

One thing that Sachi and I have gotten used to in these places is the fantastic food. I suppose that if we hadn’t been spoiled at the other places by top-flight cuisine, the food at this place wouldn’t seem so bad. And it wasn’t bad–just not too good.

The first course was salmon and scallops with onions and dressing. The scallops were very good, but the salmon was tasteless.

The second course was a cold potato soup, coninuing with tastelessness theme–one which would dog the whole meal. The cook definitely needs a refresher course in spices.

Along with the soup they gave us bread. It’s hard to get bread wrong, but they certainly didn’t get it too right. The cook again got spices wrong, using Thyme in the olive oil, leaving a very strange aftertaste.

The next course was Tai (sea bream), again very bland. We forgot to take a picture before eating….

Last was a filet steak with potatoes. I know from experience that it’s very hard to screw up filet, but they managed to somehow. Maybe the cut was just bad, it was stringy and hard too chew, even tough. The red wine sauce was simply unremarkable.

Like I said, not a terrible meal, but hardly all that great. Just not what we expected from our countryside inn. Still, there’s always a good opportunity for a photo… And as I said, the staff are one of the better things about the hotel. After we finished the steak, we didn’t feel like coffee and cake, so we asked if they could bring it to our toon, and they did–a big tray with the coffees and desserts, all the more impressive considering the up-and-down trek from the kitchen to our room, at the far, far back end of the building.

Breakfast this morning was more of the same–food that looks classy but was not all that great. A salad for breakfast, followed by runny eggs and a sausage that was somehow bland. And why do restaurants serve rock-hard butter with soft bread, so that you can’t spread it and instead have to litter the bread with chunks of butter?

Later we went swimming in their pool–not bad, until I got a look at the junk in the water. Seems like with this place, every silver lining has a cloud…