It can be done. I proved it tonight.

Not every trip is wonderful and not every experience within it is grand. Many of us feel a sort of compulsion to turn all our travel endeavors into one long run of good news and great experiences. But they are not. Of course.

Herewith, a brief explanation of my bad restaurant dinner in Paris:

We had no other really solid plan, so we decided to “cafe” it for dinner. We probably should have just gone to the homey little cafe on the corner, but instead we walked over to the edge of the Marais and to the “Cafe Hugo” on the Place des Vosges, where we had eaten on our first night in town.

It hadn’t been perfect, but it’s one of those “interesting history places” (Victor Hugo, the author, had lived on the Place des Vosges; hence, the Cafe Hugo) as well as an “interesting view” locale. (If you are facing west you can watch the day turning, ever so slowly, into night, the way it does here in August. And, too, there is the square of the Place de Vosges, and the curious modern art shops across the street.)

Anyway, the history and the view constituted Warning No. 1 and Warning No. 2 that the place might be trouble — because the quality of food at restaurants the world over usually sags if the place is historical or has a view, and the Cafe Hugo has both. But we had been there last week, and it was OK.

This time it wasn’t. And perhaps I could have seen it coming had I bothered to read the reviews on a food-review website.

My order was profoundly simple. Maybe the two easiest items on the menu. Onion soup as a starter, a croque Provencale as my main. It was inexpensive, as well: 5.5 euro for the soup, 7 for the croque.

My third warning came when the waiter brought out the main courses for Leah and Britt at the same time he came out with my soup. In France, starters are delivered before main courses, even if some of the people at the table didn’t order starters. But there was my starter arriving with their main dishes. Said Leah: “Your soup should have come first.”

I had ordered the onion soup six days before,  and it was fine. This time, however, it was lukewarm, and the melted cheese on the bread floating at the top of the soup already was firming up again. Plus, they seemed to have misplaced the onions; the broth was not very onion-y, and the strips of onion I had seen only six days before … far fewer.

I am one of those people who hates to send things back to the kitchen because I have heard the horror stories about what happens to dishes that are sent back. So, I muddled through my soup. Certainly the croque would rectify the situation.

But the croque Provencale — which is just a slab of bread, toasted, with a bit of ham and tomato atop it, covered with a mild melted cheese of the Emmental sort — did not arrive. And it still did not arrive. We asked the waiter where the “sandwich” (pronounced, SAND-weech) was … but 10 minutes later it has still not arrived, and we asked the other waiter about it, and our waiter told him, in French, “Oh, it’s coming.” Clearly, he had forgotten I had ordered it.

Well, the croque finally arrived, as Leah and Britt were finishing, and the bread was not toasted and the cheese was already cold, and the little side salad came with dirt on some of the lettuce leaves. I didn’t exactly have to gag it down, but it wasn’t as good as it should have been, especially in the city where bad food (in theory) does not exist.

The service also was awful, but it had been the other time, too, and we were prepared to deal with that. We left a tip of 60 cents, thinking that ought to have made the point. “Yes, we considered a tip, and this is what we think you earned.”

The rest of the evening was largely saved by the outdoor showing of the 1939 classic “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” at the south end of the Place des Vosges park, which we watched for quite some time, and a stop for gelato.

But, still, I had a bad meal. Part of it was my fault, because the Cafe Hugo has at least two good reasons (view and history) not to be very good, and I hadn’t bothered with “due diligance” in regard to its reputation.

The people making and serving my dinner just did not care about quality. It should have been good and simple. It was bad and difficult. It happens, from time to time. Even in Paris.