10:25am

I'm off to France today. Long flight, early out of the house. Need to be to the airport a couple hours before my flight (for I will *not* risk missing this one).

But! Must take time for breakfast on this day because it *is* the most important meal of the day. And it'll be hard to forget this last breakfast before leaving the country for a week.

Got to the United desk at 10:00. Checked in by 10:10 because there is not any line to speak of. Pretty quiet at the airport. 10:20 and I'm through the metal detector. I have to take out the laptop, put it in it's own basket, jacket in it's own basket, keys and wallet in it's own bowl. So I have to put through two baskets, one backpack, one laptop case and a bowl. My hands are full. Fortunately, nothing on me sets off the metal detector, so no full body cavity search today.

Since I did get to the airport early, I get to wait in chairs for over an hour. Hard to do when you can't wait to get on the airplane and get going.

5pm PDT

Right now we're somewhere between Chicago and New York. We're at 30,000 feet and it's minu 45 Celcius outside, not to mention a might windy.

The flight to Chicago was uneventful and quite full.

It's hard to be too eventful when I can't actually sit back comfortably and I certainly can't extend my legs. I was stuck in the middle seat between two other guys.

Being typical guys, we attempted to ignore each other's very presence for three hours or whatever the flight was while playing an unspoken game of "Who Gets the Armrest" for four hours.

I was definitely tired so I napped a bit, but probably only for 10 minutes at a time because much longer than that and my neck got very uncomfortable, not to mention I fear I had a nasty tendency to relax and have my mouth hang open! Not cool.

Got in to Chicago on time in concourse B. At that time I had about 25 minutes before my flight so I decided to call home and touch base there. I did get to talk with Laurel, which was nice since I left early enough that I didn't get a chance to say bye to her.

I couldn't find the flight mentioned on the screens so I asked someone at another gate and got pointed to concourse C. Turns out it was quite a piece away so by the time I got to the gate, I basically walked on the plane. The plane is a B767-300. This is one of those planes where you walk thru first class (very nice) and then you get to the next cabin which is still nice but not as much. Is this for me? No, this would be business class. Keep walking bucko...

The front of the third cabin was labeled Economy Plus. Okay, that's better than nothing, yes? Would be if it were for me. Keep walking partner...

Eventually, just before exiting the plane from the back I found my set. In the cattle class, oh, sorry, Economy class, they seat two near the windows, three in the middle. I had a window seat. Under the seat in front of me, where my feet would *like* to go, some metal box took up half the space. I was starting to stress that I was going to have a seat mate. In the end, it didn't happen. Actually cattle class is pretty empty. The middle three seats next to me are empty. If I can't get comfortable in my two seats, I may sleep over there. It's probably five feet wide for the three seats. Nearly comfortable. The most annoying part is the lack of leg room, but I can turn sideways and stretch out a bit. Can't get in to the aisle, though, or else the attendants will run me down as they mosey up and down the aisle.

Wonder of wonders! Hot towels. Okay, they're warm and moist and the size of a paper napkin, but they are some sort of cloth and they smell good. Grabbed two and washed my face and hands. Nice! Now I'm lemony fresh!

Now I think I shall read my Paris tour book and get a sense of where I will be staying and how to get there and what I want to see. That should kill a few hours.

I don't know if I'll get much/any sleep but that will certainly make it easier to sleep come Saturday night in Paris. Not sure sleeping is what I want to be doing on a Saturday night in Paris, but you gotta start somewhere.

10am

Hit the tarmac in Paris. The airport looks like any other international airport you might imagine, right down to the english signs. But before doing that, I did get a look at dawn over the Atlantic. Kind of nice.

It's only once you deplane that it becomes clear you're not in Kansas anymore. These people smoke *everywhere*! In shops, in restaurants and bathrooms. Here the designated smoking area is apparently everywhere.

I also got lost in the airport. Or rather, I couldn't figure out how to get to Paris from the airport. A taxi is spendy ($60) and there is supposed to be this great metro/subway/train system. If I can figure out how to get there...

Turns out what I wanted was the RER, which I had to take a shuttle bus to get to.

I suppose I *could* have asked someone but what's the fun in that? If a smart guy can't figure it out without speaking a word of the language, it must be too hard.

In the end I paid for a ticket to get on the RER to Paris (about $7). This took me downtown, actually right to the stop I wanted to go to. This would have been a great accomplishment if it had gone well from there. Instead I was trapped inside a multifloor mall and could *not* figure out how to get out! Most people apparently got there on the Metro or drove, so I could find those. Surely *some* of them had come walking in. I just needed to find that entrance!

So picture the dumb American, rolling around his luggage, laptop case and backpack through the mall, looking for the exit. Sheesh.

Found it in the end. Then I had to walk about six blocks to my hotel. Not bad.

That first view of Paris as I exited the mall was really something. My first thought was that it looked like something Disney would build. Like the Epcot center view of France. Lots of people, unique architecture (unique to me, common as dirt compared to the rest of Paris), really neat.

I was tired as anything by this time (call it 11:30am local) but I had to stop several times to enjoy some building or cathedral or church. Because I might never be this way again. Really something to see.

I needed to figure out which direction to go in since I knew where I was (more or less) and I knew where the hotel was (more or less). So I needed a corner with signs. Well Paris doesn't do signs on the corners. It turns out that on many corners you will find the street name posted on the building at the corner. And if you're lucky standing at a corner, you can see *both* street names. Then you're styling. I, on the other hand, was turned around. So I had to go back the way I had started (only a half block).

It turns out the French do have cross walks but it's a bit of a misnomer. I saw several cars just barrel through them. It sort of like you have to have the momentum of several people in the crosswalk before the cars will respect it. I *never* wanted to be the first in the cross walk. So I let women and children enter before me to sacrifice their lives before I risked mine. In the end I saw very few actually get run over but it was a close thing.

My hotel was easy to find. The name is the Hotel Violet. Remember that in case you're looking for a very centrally located hotel (just a block from the Metro, if you know the line and stop) with tiny rooms. Very tiny rooms.

But what do you really need? It's not like I'm going to spend much time there. But it *is* small.

I dumped my stuff and headed for the shower. I looked like I had been run over, propped back up then backed over again.

Post shower I was feeling tired but refreshed. So out the door I went!

First stop: The Louvre!

Did I see all the Louvre? Nope. Not enough time. Too much to do. I did what the tour book lovingly referred to as "the jogging tour" of the Louvre.

Truth is, I wouldn't know if most of the medieval art was good bad or indifferent. I know the Mona Lisa is supposed to spectacular, but from my experience it's really just an opportunity for tourists to get their picture taken in front of it and it's darker than I thought it would be. And smaller.

I saw some great sculpture, which I like better than the medieval stuff. It has lots of other stuff, including stuff from the northwest indians. There was even a head that looked like it could have been found on Easter Island.

Truth is, I saw, even at a jog, probably a third to half before I realized I had become numb to art. It happens. Look it up.

It would be great to hit it for a couple hours a day for a week. Less risk of overexposure.

I also like seeing artists coming in to work on copies or their interpretations of great pieces. That was cool.

I didn't see anyone doing this with the Mona Lisa. That would just take too much cajones, I think.

Next stop, find an Internet cafe. The guidebook put one about a mile away, so I hoofed over to that to find it closed with no notion of hours (the guidebook claimed it'd be open today). Uh, oh.

I started wandering back towards the Louvre (I was now on the left bank - you can tell which is which bank if you stand on one of the many bridges that span the Seine and face down stream. At that point, those are the left and right banks, respectively). Eventually I ran across a copy center selling Internet access. Cool!

I bought a half hour of time, thinking it'd be enough. Then I saw down and found out something. The French are sadists or masochists. One or the other.

They moved some of the keys on a standard keyboard around. Not all of them, just some important ones to a touch typer. The A/Q have been swapped as well as theh W/Z and the M has moved next to the L. Think that's not bad? It slowed my typing down to a quarter of normal. Painful.

I also grabbed my first Paris food on this outing. It was about 2pm and I was famished. I didn't want to sit in a restaurant (bistro/cafe/whatever) so I grabbed some street vendor food. Pretty tasty! Some kind of bread loaf cut in half with goodies cooked in to the middle. They called it a panini. You could gets a variety of goodies, I went for something with sausage and tomato sauce and cheese.

Now it was time to hit Notre Dame. What an incredible building!

It was founded in the 12th century. The flying buttresses were built starting around 1330. That's 670 years!

This was the building that had the most effect on me. It was difficult to imagine that kind of age. But if you looked up inside the structure, you could still see where smoke had stained the stonework in the ceiling. That stain was probably 500 years old! How amazing. Wonderful stained glass and a simply amazing sense of scale and presence.

I brought my tripod to take pictures, knowing that to get pictures inside the dim interior I'd need a long exposure. I got a few off before a guard told me no tripods. I wasn't the only one using a tripod but he was adamant. I'll be darned if I can figure out why cameras and video are okay but a long exposure shot on a tripod is bad? Whatever.

By the time I got done there it was about 5pm. I headed back to the room since my feet were killing me. In fact I now have a flaming blister on my pinky toe of my left foot. Ouch.

Then I fell asleep. This part wasn't really planned but I fell asleep for about an hour while I was resting. Sleepy, sleepy me.

About 7:30 I headed out to track and kill dinner. Which turned out to be a real french bistro called, appropriately enough Bistro Romain.

I had the special where I got to pick the appetizer (mozarella and tomato with a vinnegrette(?) and the main dish (a salmon and rice dish whose name escapes me) and my dessert (creme brulee). It was all pretty mediocre, I have to say. I had a glass of the house red and it was pretty bite worthy. The only standout was the maitre'd who acted pretty offended and snooty when he figured out I was an American. That was at least an experience.

Two hours later I slunk out. Oh, and the creme brulee was burned on the top and the custard was inconsistent. Yick.

Now back in the room winding down. Must sleep soon or risk falling over and passing out.

Tomorrow I must hunt for souvenirs and other goodies. I also want to do the Arc de Triumph and the Eiffel Tower. Lots of other possibilities depending on how much my feet hurt.

I slept pretty well last night. I woke up once in the middle of the night but got back to sleep. I actually had my alarm set to go off at 8am but when it did, it still looked dark outside and Paris was not yet beginning to wake up, so I went back to sleep for another hour.

The hotel serves la petite dejeuner (breakfast) which consists of croissants, jam, toast, cereal, some fruit, yogurt, juice. Seemed like a nice light start to my day.

Then I was off to see the second days' sights.

The weather was very poor today with drizzle all day and lots of fog and low visibility.

I hoofed it to the Metro station a block away and began to try and figure out how to use it. It's very complete and very complicated to figure out at first. Buses run on the streets. One level down is the Metro which runs from station to station in a pretty comprehensive and random appearing fashion. A level below that is the RER or trains that run on main lines, more or less East/West and North/South (or something/oest and Nord/Sud) with some variation tossed in. So you have to know the metro line well enough to know if you need the metro, a bus or a train. Then you find the right level. Then you have to get the right direction because the main lines go each way and you figure out the direction by knowing what's at the end of the line.

Quick side story. While figuring where to go a guy of 50-ish approached me and asked if I spoke English. Since he didn't look like a begger I replied yes. He told me a sad story of visiting Paris, getting his pocket picked and his flight was later today. He just needed another 5 Euro to get to the airport so he could fly home to San Francisco. He didn't actually come out and ask. He actually asked if I was going to the airport today and if he could bum a ride. I explained I wasn't leaving till tomorrow but yes, I offered to help him.

Odds are he was scamming me, in fact it's pretty much the story I'd use if I were trying to scam people without having to physically pick their pocket. Oh, well. It was $5 and was either a good samaritan or it was $5 so I had a story to tell. Good either way. If I could help him improve his scam at all, or even if it was real, he should have asked for an address to send the $5 to when he returns. That would have cemented it for me.

Anyhow, I did great with finding the right train, going down the metro entrance, down to the train station and catching it towards the Arc de Triumph. That went treally well, I made no mistakes but getting to that train from the Metro station was pretty confusing so I was concerned about my ability to get back to that station (under the metro entrance you may have multiple metro stops accessible to each other and the train).

Once you exit the station and climb to the street you get your first view of the Arc de Triumph (I call it the Arc for short because I've been there. We're that close now.) It's surrounded by a circular road where a dozen roads come together. But you dare not try and cross to the Arc. One writer called the roundabout "vehicular russian roulette with more bullets than chambers" (death is certain!). Instead you take the underground passage and live a little longer.

Anyhow the Arc was pretty keen. Very large and impressive in it's scale. I walked up the 284 steps (they tell you how many it is) to the top of the Arc. There is a museum about the Arc at the top which is pretty neat. Then you go out on the view platform and get a really great view of Paris. Except for the rain. And the wind. And the lack of visibility. But other than that...

In the end you could see a couple miles before it grayed out. But it does appear as though all of Paris leads to the arch, with a dozen major roads coming together at the Arc.

I'm sure it's even better on a day where you're not squinting to keep the rain and wind out of your eyes.

Next it was off to the Eiffel Tower, which didn't look promising since you couldn't even see the top from the Arc, which didn't bode well for the visibility from there either.

So it was back to decode metro again and sure enough it went just right, with just a quarter mile walk to the tower.

There are an amazing number of street hawkers around and the Eiffel (again with the first names, because I've been there and we're that close) is no exception.

They're pretty universally immigrants, usually from African countries. They push umbrellas connstantly, especially to me since I didn't have one nor need one. I'll dry off, for pete's sake.

Anyway, you ride up the first two stops to the middle observation deck of the tower. The elevators slide up the angle of the lower legs. Kind of neat. At the middle floor, you can change to the elevator that takes you to the top via a central shaft.

Did I mention it was windy? From the top you could feel the nearly 1000ft tower sway. I heard someone say it swayed 5 inches either way in a good wind. Seemed reasonable. It felt a bit like you were on the deck of a ship.

The first level of the top observation floor has windows and you can see the city. Some of it anyway, since the fog was still an issue. You could also walk a flight of stairs to the exposed viewing deck. This was a mistake, at least for half the tower since the wind and blowing rain nearly pushed me off the tower! Except for the big fence. And bars. And the fact the wind wasn't *that* strong. But other than that it was bye-bye Darrin! Instead I just got wet.

Back down the elevator to the observation deck, I bought some souvenirs. It's hard to find something that doesn't have cheesy souvenir written all over it.

On the way back to the metro from the Eiffel, I stopped at a pizza place and had a margarita un jabon (ham pizza) and un coke (a coke). I was sat in tight quarters next to a pair of lovely young ladies chatting up a storm. Turns out they spoke less english than I spoke french. So they went about their business (sipping Espressos) and I mine (eating my jabon and drinking my coke).

Back on the metro, I managed to flawlessly unwind my journey, complete with popping out *exactly* the right metro station near my hotel.

I dropped my souvenirs off, lay down on the bed for a half hour to rest my feet (my little toe on my left foot has a MAMMOTH blister from walking - OW!)

By that time it was 2:45 and it was time to be off again. I wanted to do some shopping and see another museum. I chose the Pompidou Center since it houses the Musee National d'Art Moderne, which loosely translates appears to mean "Art that often looks like junk thrown together or paint splatters".

I will be the first to admit to a strong and stubborn ignorance of the merit of much modern art, but I have to respect the lengths these people go to make me say "What the hell?!?"

You can catch some pictures in the gallery. Some really odd stuff. But there was some stuff that was really keen and catchy. It's just a real mish-mash. Highlights included a piece that looked like a small garden with rows and a few weeds, even a pile of poo and other organic stuff. Where you might have expected veggies, instead it appears to be growing a crop of cactuses (cacti?) and phalluses (phalli?) painted in vibrant colors. I've no idea what the artist was trying to say but it was said with some volume.

Another piece had six tanks with goldfish swimming in each one backed with TVs flashing loud and quick MTV style imagery. Several people stood around looking at that one. One gentleman paused in his viewing, leaned over to address the person standing next to him and asked in a nice British accent: "You think it annoys the hell out of the goldfish?" Now that's art that is successful! It makes the viewer ask the big questions...

Of less interest was a white room with a big roll of paper about 5 inches high. Along the length of three walls, the artist meticulously put small dots, not quite strokes. On the fourth wall were several larger pieces where strokes/dots covered the paper, row after obsessive row. *This* room, unlike most, had a sign outside it saying photography was prohibited. Good thing, I was going to make a huge panorama pic and capture that puppy! What a silly piece. Persistence is NOT art and shouldn't be treated like it is.

The highlight for me from the museum was not even on the walls. I was walking the length of a hallway when couple women passed me, both older, say 50+. Something about the gait of the lady on the left first caught my eye. Then the makeup. Then the bad wig. That lady was a dude! And an *ugly* lady!

Okay, I wasn't completely sure, so I did an about face, intent on getting ahead of them to take another pass. Turns out I didn't need it because as I prepared to pass I could here him address his wife (they had wedding rings!) in a baritone.

So apparently he and his wife are comfortable with his cross dressing. But not comfortable enough that his wife will help him make sure he doesn't get out of the house in an ugly outfit, atrocious makeup and a really bad wig.

By this time it was 5:30 and I headed for the shopping district. Unfortunately I learned something it would have been nice to know earlier. The shopping districe, in fact much of Paris save restaurants, shuts down on Sunday at 5pm. Doh!

I shopped a bit more in a card shop but after that I was done, grabbed some quick food on the way back to the hotel, for I was seriously out of energy.

Got back around 7pm and now I'm catching up on the journal and giving my feet a break.

Tomorrow my flight to Nice leaves at 10:40. I asked the guy at the front desk when I needed to leave here to be sure to get to the airport on time to for my flight. After several tries in asking different ways, it became clear he faked english well but understood mine poorly.

We did finally establish that I was taking a plane, but given how long it took to do that, I think I mistrust his estimates. I'll just be sure to be early. Though I think I need to get someone here to confirm which terminal (1 or 2, though I'm pretty sure it will be 2, but 2a-2f still needs to be known).

So tonight will be a fairly quiet night, which me reading for about an hour then off to bed to try and get myself synced up better.

Tomorrow we will spend an hour or two at Infineon, thus beginning to justify my way on this trip. We'll see how it goes.

Unsurprisingly, Paris remains largely unexplored by me. There's only so much you can see and do in two days, really a day and a half since I didn't hit the hotel till noon yesterday and I was so tired.

You really need to spend four days. And I think spring would be far better or maybe fall, than winter.

I've had the TV in the room on for background noise. It's sort of entertaining to try and figure out what's going on without understanding the language. Right now a guy is trying to stab a suit of armor in the head with a spear. I *think* it's the equivalent of the History Channel talking about how effective the armor is at keeping the man from stabbing him in the head.

That's it for now...

10:15am

Got checked out in time. Left the hotel about 8:15 for the Metro. Flight is at 10:48am. Including finding the right train, it takes about an hour to get to the airport.

Mild panic as I got to the airport. I had one last turnstile to get through to enter the airport. It wanted a Metro ticket. Mine stopped working!

I tried several other turnstiles, looked for a ticket machine. I was literally a jumped turnstile away from the safety of the airport. Fortunately someone had left their no longer needed metro ticket on the other side of the turnstile so I reached over, snagged it (no one was around to see) and used *that* to gett in. Problem solved.

Then I had to find the Air France desk and the right terminal/gate area. Not too much trouble.

All told, I was at my gate by 9:30 for my boarding at 10:15. Oops. Looks like it's time to board for the flight.

1:30pm

Flight is late! I'm supposed to be in Nice by noon so I can be at the customer site by 2pm. I found my bags and grabbed a taxi. I had written out the address so I could give it to the taxi driver who, I quickly established, did not speak English.

He drove over 160kph (100mph) to get me where I needed to be and it was still a $50 cab ride.

We (I and and the marketing guy I was traveling with, Mick) met with the customer for a couple hours, doing intros and talking about what they wanted to accomplish while we were here. Then, we called it a night and headed back to the hotel with a schedule to return by 9am the next morning.

At 6pm Mick and I went looking for a place to eat, with no success. Turns out they don't open up around there until 7pm at the earliest. Fortunately Mick's friend Nevil works in the area so he came and rescued us. First we stopped for a pint of Guinness at a local pub (I was told it was a pretty good pint, but it was hard for me to tell since I had nothing to compare it to on the Guinness front). Then he took us out to dinner at a fantastic place. It was a little place that had great food and atmosphere and was probably in a 300 year old building. Not pretentious at all, it very much felt like a family restaurant.

I had sliced duck breast and we had a bottle of wine. Very good. It was called Gigondas. A nice bottle of wine and a good one to share with a friend. Afterwords the hostess brought a "digestive" which sounds much neater in a french accent. It was basically a shot of something very alcoholic which numbed my throat and made my eyes burn.

I drank far more than I'm used to that night. Got back to the hotel around 11pm.

9am we were at the customer site. Mick worked on getting the test model we converted for them working while I gave a 2 hour whirlwind tour of how to write models using our technology.

I clearly gave them too much information too quickly as the two engineers were glassy eyed and looked pretty numb afterwards.

We had a cafeteria lunch of some indeterminate sorts of food. Some kind of squash bits and something noodly that had a seafood taste. Some cheese and bread. Great bread here, no question.

Then we continued to work with the engineers till about 4pm. We caught a ride back to the Synopsys office in Sophia where we debriefed the local bigwig about what we're doing and what was working and what was not.

Since we were in a Synopsys office, I was able to hook up and get email finally.

We stayed there until we caught a ride to the hotel around 7pm.

Back at the hotel, we decided to work out for a bit before dinner. So we rode exercise bikes and I swam a bit.

After that and a quick shower we were off walking to dinner. We had only the vaguest ideas where we were going. Basically it was down to the ocean and hang a right. Fifteen minutes later, with me nearly convinced we were lost, we found the place.

This place was very much more a "typical" french restaurant. Snooty french waiter that couldn't speak any english, good seafood, nice wine, shots of grappa as a digestive. Pretty spendy but not bad with the entire meal costing $120 for two with wine.

Stayed awake till 12:30am before I crashed. Slept mostly till 7:40am though I did wake for a bit at 5am.

I've yet to see the sea. Or much of anything else in the daytime. I don't expect that to change till my play day on Friday.

Breakfast at 8am, Infineon at 9am.

Spent more time reviewing the material, looking at the model they converted on their own (in two hours, which is very good). I think we're off to the Synopsys office again near lunch time. I don't know if we'll be back here again later today (I expect so) but hopefully not on Thursday (though I put it at better than 50% odds).

Well, I think we're pretty much done with the main part of our trip here so it seems like a good opportunity to update everyone on how things are going.

When we arrived at Infineon, we received great news. Florent, one of the Infineon Engineers had successfully converted a Dual Port Ram model to a custom DWMM in just two hours! And it passed all the regression tests. This was great.

Michael (the other engineer, whose name is pronounced Michelle) was having a bit of trouble getting the sample testbench working with a couple instances of the DPRAM so we helped with that and pretty quickly demonstrated the ease of Logical Address Mapping these two instances in to a single range of memory (using Device mapping). They liked the combined view and ability to load the memory from a single file. (Sorry, this is the work portion, so it's a bit more technical)

Oh, at lunch we met with a manager from Atmel about their memory needs. He provides tools for developers internally as well.

But the salad bar was extraordinary. It really was a bar with tons of different salads, not just things to toss on your lettuce. And the bread! I can't get enough of the baguettes!

Anyway, back to the work stuff.

By the end of Wednesday, they had a working testbench and had begun to play with the tools and could see the testbench commands adding value.

Basically, by the end of Wednesday, we had accomplished the main goals for the trip.

On Thursday morning we had a meeting at the Sophia office with Jean Christophe Vial (the Infineon Engineering Manager) and Michael.

Basically it was for Pierre Bricaud (who arranged the trip) to be sure we had met all the requirements from Infineon and were completely successful. We were. Infineon seems very happy.

Both Mick and I gave them cards so if they run in to any technical hurdles, we'll help them be successful.

I can really see where this kind of close working relationship gives the customer warm fuzzies and makes them much more trusting of working closely with us.

As for Infineon, there is talk about this turning in to a success story, possible paper for DATE or SNUG and all kinds of other good will and good press.

We are around the rest of the day Thursday in case Infineon runs in to any issues though I don't expect to hear from them. If that's the case, that'll be it for this trip.

A side note:

Man but I'm tired of the smoke around here. Going out to lunch is terrible because I come back reeking of smoke. They don't actually smoke in the offices so that's good. According to Mick's friend Nevil, the french do have a law that *requires* separate smoking and non-smoking areas in restaurant but no one enforces it and most restaurants just ignore it.

Today for lunch we had couscous! Actually a big stew bowl full of indeterminate pieces of meat, carrots, squash, potatoes and onions. Another giant bowl of couscous. You ladle whopping portions of the one over the other. The squash was a little overcooked (squishy squash == nasty) and the meat really was indeterminate and still attached to large knuckly bits of bone, but it was tasty. I enjoyed it a great deal.

I passed on the rose' today as I think I've had enough wine at least till dinner. Here having wine with lunch is just par for the course. In this case the bottle was a generic clear glass with no label that is refilled as needed from some large vat in the back.

It was a very popular place. We had to have reservations and we still had to sit outside in the wind and weather. Nippy round here! The clouds came in again and it's 10 degrees colder today compared to yesterday.

We had a quiet afternoon on Thursday, just catching up on email and work stuff.

Thursday was a very different evening, since it was our "last" in the area (I didn't let the local biz development guy know I was here Friday because he kept talking about making us available to the customer while here and I didn't want to lose my Friday).

Nevil, Mick's friend, collected us at 8:15pm. Downtown by 8:30, we had another pint of Guinness. Then off to a pizza place that is nothing like pizza hut. Good but different pizza. Another bottle of red wine.

Since nothing happens quickly around here, we got done there around 10pm. Nevil and Mick got to spend a bit of time reminiscing about their University days. It was fun to listen in on.

A bit later, Nevil called a friend of his to come join us for a drink out and about. Turned out to be a woman who cooks on the very expensive and exclusive boats that moor 'round here in the off season. She's Canadian originally, but it was hard to tell as her accent was all over the map. Literally. She brought along a couple guy friends.

All three work the boats, cooking for well-to-do people with large boats. They go all over the world, either with the boats or switching from boat to boat.

Sounds sort of interesting for a chunk of time, I suppose, but definitely a different lifestyle than I could imagine.

We stayed for a drink with them. I had a rose', a bit sweet and dessert-like. Then we called that a night and got home by 11:30.

These people seemed more than a little worn, world-weary if you will. I couldn't help thinking they were missing out by settling down and building a life, especially by this time of their life (call it 35-45). I'm sure they'd feel similarly confused about my choices.

I took a taxi to Nice along the coast from Juan des Pines to Nice. Very pretty. Nice day to start with.

I first went to the Marche des Fleurs. Really, really cool.

In addition to flowers (lots even this time of year) there were lots of foods, fresh and cooked. I wanted to bring some of these amazing little sugar things that were shaped like lots of little vegetables and fruits and mushrooms, but you can't take back anything that doesn't come in a jar/bottle/can/etc. Too bad, because they were neat. I took pics of them though.

Then off to the beach to look for shells and see that. Nice views, sunshine, people sitting on the beach (on the little round rocks) and walking on the boardwalk.

Hung out there watching people for 45 minutes or so. No sand at all, by the way. None to be found up and down pretty much this whole stretch of coast. It was a very nice beach though. Friendly and comfortable. The kind of beach you might skip on, if you were properly motivated. But if you did, I'm pretty sure people would still look at you oddly, saying things about you skipping, but in French.

From there I wandered the big pedestrian mall, an outside long alley of shops that runs for a mile or so with lots of little alleys up and down from the main run.

Lots of touristy stuff.

After shopping for a while, I needed to poo. According to my map, I could find a bathroom a block or two away. I tracked it down and it was *weird*! It was about twice the size of a phone booth with opaque sides. You pay your .30 and get in and the door *whooshes* closed behind you. There is a low-slung toilet which put my hienie about six inches above the floor. When you sat on it it settled another inch or two from your weight. After doing my business, I discovered that the toilet paper did not come off a roll but rather like a napkin dispenser. That was broken. Eventually I used a pen to scoop/pull out enough paper to finish properly and dry my hands from washing them, but it was touch and go. Worse, the entire time, you can hear people walking right by on the busy street. It was not clear to me that I could lock the door so I had to assume it knew it was occupied and wouldn't let anyone else in.

An hour later, while shopping in a large shopping area, I discovered I had neglected to zip properly as I had been so focused on finishing and getting out of there before someone else popped in. Always good for the self-esteem.

I unfortunately missed what appears to be the annual Noel festival in the large park that runs through the middle of town for several miles by one day. Starts tomorrow. Looked like it will be fun.

I found a large mall-ish thing though the shops were smaller and the place had a very large number of small shops in a compact area. It seemed like a weird compromise between European small shops and a mall approach.

I had lunch there. Pizza again. Very popular here due to the proximity to Italy (20 minutes away). This area has gone back and forth between French control and Italian control over the centuries, so there is a real blurring of culture.

No alcohol today. I need a break. Like for the next month or two.

I was done by 5pm or so and caught another cab back to Juan des Pines and the hotel.

After resting for a half hour it was back out to Juan des Pines in search of a loaf of bread and some water.

The place the hotel sent me to had closed from 4-7pm so no joy there. What's up with those hours?

Eventually I found something called Casino which turned out to be a small store. Picked up a coke, a baguette and since they only had room temp water, a liter of juice.

I'm spending a quiet evening in my room decompressing.

The only french I can do reliably is Merci, bonjour, bonsour, oui and no. OK works great here. When I got in to the cab today, I said "Nice, sil vouz plait. Marche des Fleurs." He responded with something fast and french and off we went. Then he tried to ask me something else and I admitted to only speaking english so he gave up other than a bit of english. He asked if I was from London. I guess all us english speakers sound the same. He thought it was neat I was from America. He didn't understand United States or the States. America worked.

As I said, I'm all packed up and pretty much ready to go. Just need to get a good night's sleep and get going by 7am tomorrow.

I will spend approximately 18 hours in a plane tomorrow, with about three hours of sitting in airports. I hit the ground (ideally) by 8:30ish so out of the airport by 9pm, home by 10pm.

Flew home. Very tired. Long flights. No joy. Lost my main luggage when I nearly missed the Paris->Wash/Dulles connection due to a late arrival. It showed up the next day. At least this time I hadn't packed my car keys in the luggage. So, you see, I can learn, though slowly.

The long and short of it is that it was a really great trip, whether you judge by the touristy stuff or the food or the work stuff that went very well. If you're going to travel, though, there's a lot to be said for doing it on the company dime!