It was a toxic combination of hubris and curiosity that led me on my first trip to France in 17 years last September. That July, I’d moved down to San Juan, Puerto Rico, for what I anticipated being one month. It turned into two, before turning into a more permanent move upon rapidly and irrevocably falling in love.

When I’d booked that ticket for July, what I’d had in mind for the rest of 2019 was a nomadic life: August back on Long Island with family, September in France and Spain, and then a seemingly endless arena of opportunity. All I knew was going to be out of Brooklyn for a while. My years in New York City were fabulous in all the cliché Sex and the City ways that one might imagine, but it had also spiralled me into debt and exhaustion, counting the seasons by how many times I lost my voice, and how many jobs I was working.

And I was done with Brooklyn when I left, just not in the way I’d anticipated; while I’d hoped to become a peripatetic freelance writer, I’d simply swapped one home for another. Even though the rest of my plans changed, I wanted to keep my September travel as I’d envisioned it when I agreed to the trip and impulsively booked the Spain portion while on my yoga mat waiting for class to start. The new boyfriend for whom I was moving to San Juan would join me there.

In France, I’d be in the Cognac region on a press trip with Camus, an independent, family-owned brand. What did I know about Cognac before I went? Just the basics: a distilled white wine; a kind of brandy but with geographical limitations. Hennessy, Rémy Martin—these were the famous brand names. Sidecar—that was the cocktail I could pull out of my hat if you wanted something based on the stuff.

From the get-go this trip wasn’t the glamorous reprieve I had in mind. My first flight out of JFK was cancelled, and then I had to get to Newark—a two-hour trip—for a midnight plane on a budget airline. Imagining that packed-out, poorly ventilated terminal right now, in the time of Covid-19, looks like a movie—an unimaginable reality. I ordered terrible nachos and a worse martini at the tiny restaurant, reminding myself through my mental list of regrets that I was going to France and I hadn’t paid for this ticket.

When the other writers and I settled in for our first meal, though, I knew there would be trouble ahead. An older male writer who had come up in the heyday of men’s magazines presented the server with his business card, requesting a cocktail that originated in Cuba be made here in rural France, to his precise specifications. I drank only wine with my quinoa salad dressed with balls of avocado. Ironically, the Latin American theme of my first French evening continued with the menu’s only vegetarian option.

““I imagined not sitting down to eat with anyone who would pass the server a business card, demanding a daiquiri.””

The writer continued to present his business card recipe to every server, at every restaurant, clearly thinking it a clever way to gauge the skills of whoever happened to be behind the bar that night. And I—attempting to make life easier on everyone around me, in reaction to this man’s entitlement—decided I would be pescatarian for the duration of the trip. What this meant, apparently, was that every dish presented to me was a piece of dead fish covered in cream, and I woke up each day to drink green smoothies, attempting to undo the damage to my stomach that had become so unaccustomed to such richness. It didn’t work: Things only got worse in there as the trip went on.

Did I enjoy the Cognac, though? Absolutely. I learned through long tastings, time among the vines, a visit to a cooperage where their barrels were built—these were the experiences I was seeking when I gave up Brooklyn in search of the world. Their blends from the Île de Ré, so salty and almost whisky-like, changed my perception of what Cognac was and could be.

It all felt worthwhile, also, when I rode a bike around the village surrounding our fancy hotel in search of a superstore where I could replace my iPhone charger—old world meeting new, an angle on a place I would never have come on my own. We made our own Cognac blends; we went to not just expensive restaurants but a rowdy bistro where the server mocked my terrible French pronunciation. All this came at a price, I would find; not just embarrassment with waitstaff and a few arguments about politics with my companions, but my usually dependable health.

I kept my eyes on the prize: a day in Paris to eat all the city’s vegan food, to stop into some highly recommended cocktail bars, and then on to Spain, where the cuisine is much more amenable to my way of living. (Or at least, much less dependent upon animal fat.) I imagined the pleasure of walking around the city anonymously, stopping in at any place that looked interesting, and playing the role of worldly writer I so desperately wanted to embody. I imagined not sitting down to eat with anyone who would pass the server a business card, demanding a daiquiri.

As we drove to the train station that would take me off on my glamorous day, I began to feel a telltale rumbling in my belly—something wasn’t right. I unzipped the vintage leopard-print skirt I was wearing for the occasion and visualised my freedom from the business card recipe, from the rich food. I imagined sherry and vermouth and olives and potato chips galore. As I stood on the platform, though, with no time to get to the bathroom, the train began to barrel down the tracks. I turned and projectile-vomited into a garbage can, repeatedly, and got on the train. The ride was spent alternately in the bathroom or weeping in my seat from the pain, from the fear of being sick while alone in a country where I couldn’t communicate.

Once in Paris, I took photos of the Eiffel Tower from the back of an Uber where I was barely keeping it together, before spending the entire day in bed. “I’ll be ok for Spain,” I told myself while watching a Spanish TV channel to prepare myself. I was keeping the dream alive and slowly sipping the one water bottle I had, slowly munching on some granola I’d taken from the fancy hotel that morning.

Then my boyfriend Face-Timed me from Newark, where my own saga began: His flights to Barcelona were cancelled because of a strike at the airport. Hopeless, emptied out, I booked a flight back to New York for the next day. My gluttony indeed proved a sin, and I would repent by spending what was supposed to be a lover’s holiday driving around Long Island, forever my own personal purgatory. I haven’t had a sip of Cognac since.