Tour de France

(Intro)
Hope you don't mind me write in English first, as SoGou online Chinese input is so slow tonight. If I put it off any longer, this will never happen.

I've promised to report back so at least this way I didn't break my promise.

(Day 1)
I've got an opportunity to visit several places in France last month. Originally, I only planned on visiting Toulouse in south France, attending some meetings for two weeks. Right about two weeks before departure, I got invited to give some talks in Paris. This new development pushed my boss (read: wife) over the edge and made the decision to join me in the Tour de France, along with our young boys, 5 and 7.

As my tickets have been booked ahead of time by the company, they had to get their own ticket at which point not possible to match mine. Besides, they don't want to miss too many school days. So I took off by myself first, made all the connections all barely in time and got in Toulouse airport with no surprises 6 hours ahead of them.

At Avis rental car counter, however, I got my first of many surprises. "I am sorry Sir but we do not have automatic for you. This is Europe." said the pleasant clerk behind the counter. As a veteran traveler who's been to Europe several times before, I wasn't really surprised. "I understand you mostly drive sticks here but I've made specific arrangement in my reservation and it showed automatic". "I am sorry sir", the young lad explained that this is not what's said in their system. Upon my persistent demands, he looked up all reservations here and there, amongst partners and finally offered me a choice: take an automatic BMW, with an extra 1,100 euros, on top of my original reservation which was about 400, for two weeks. That, was a surprise and not something I've prepared for. I can try but our management sure won't like me paying over 200 euros a day for rental car, even it's my project money. Besides, as a all frugal, dragon blood type consumers, I won't take the bait, not the first one anyway.

I put him on hold and went to check other rental car companies nearby and found one with 900 euros for two weeks. It's not the best solution but considering the circumstances, I took it. After all, I had planned on driving to Paris, as I was going to visit two different companies there.

With help of my Garmin, it didn't give me too much trouble finding my home for the next few days. Novotel belongs to a large hotel chain (Accor) in Europe and is considered somewhat better amongst its fleet, probably similar to Hilton in class in Hilton chains, price-wise anyway! I've booked a room for four people so when I saw the size of the room, I was surprised. It is well known, generally speaking, that European style rooms are small, in comparison to those in the States. But still! The maid was nice enough to have laid out all the beds for us, one queen size, one full size sofa bed. I put down my two pieces of luggage and sat on the bed and looked around. It wasn't that I was that tired, but rather, i HAD to sit down! There is no place for me to stand, after I put down my suitcases (one carryon, one 26"). It IS that small. As I've said before, I've been to Europe before, Italy, Spain, and Germany. But I guess this is yet another level, French level to be exact, that you literally do not have room to keep your suitcases open. Great!

With disappointment, I did remember to check all beds to make sure there's no bed bugs to bring home with. All beds are exceptionally clean, to be fair, even comparing to high end hotels in the US. The bathroom is separate from the toilet, which is exceptionally compact in size. I imagined for a few seconds what would happen when above average size folks from where I live (deep south) showed up here, and chuckled at myself for my stupidity, as I just noticed a phone sitting conveniently next to me. Doh! I am in Europe.

I washed up and headed out early, in hope to check out areas nearby and maybe hit a store or two to grab something before picking up my VIPs. Driving is not too bad, I guess, considering that I had driven in New York city and Washington DC before. Indeed the streets are narrow but not something I couldn't handle. Oh, did I forget to mention I bought the insurance for the rental car that no matter what happens, I am not responsible for any damage?

I didn't get very far as a couple of stores on my GPS are apparently wrongly marked. There are alot of smallish grocery stores and fast food chains like McDonald and Subways I can recognize but no place to park, or I don't know if I can park, as those French markings looked rather intimidating. I opted not to try something stupid on the first day. Besides, I didn't know how long it usually takes to deal with French police when something came up, which is not good from pure planning point of view. Also, I am not sure which direction to start once my car got towed away. All options considered, it's best I pick up VIPs first. So off I went.

Even though my French is rather limited, I know at least two words more than most people. Besides, my GPS is English spoken (with an attitude sometimes if I may add --"reeee calculating"), and I can read signs, especially those with big airplanes so no surprises there. Parking is very close to terminal and after a few minutes, VIPs showed up, with two running around like buzzy bees all over the place and boss dragging a carryon, tired but alert looking. They were very happy to see me standing in the corner secreting taping them. The poor wife ran to the bathroom as soon as I took over her backpack.

She was, of course, also surprised by the sheer size and efficiency of the room as this is her first time visiting Europe. But she was happy. Very happy.

I can tell.

(to be continued)

谢谢鼓励。耐心一点嘛，会明白俺没有哗众取宠标题党的意思，完全滴没有滴。
匆匆记下，有好多错字，海涵了。

(Mediterranean beach)

The hotel is surprisingly quiet, despite small rooms. It felt like the rooms have better sound isolation. That probably contributed to the late waking up, way past 10 in the morning. It sounded bad but in reality, this is about 3 or 4 in the morning back home. It was a beautiful Sunny day outside. “What do you guys want to go today?” I consulted my boss, to which she shrugged, “I don’t care” was the answer. Well, Barcelona is only 2 hours away, so I suggested we head that direction and that was the plan.

After a quick bite, we were on our way. This is the beauty of having a car at your disposal and having a fearless driver behind the steering wheel. The boys couldn’t care less about where they were, jabbing at each other like usual in the backseats, no difference than we were driving to Disney in Florida or the Smokey’s in the Tennessee. The wife is visibly excited about the differences she found: much smaller cars as if somebody squeezed them, numerous castle-looking or Gaudi type old buildings in the distance poking out from time to time behind bushes and tree lines, rows and rows of grapevines in contiguous vineyards one after another, long lines of newly installed windmill turbines…



The highways are in good shape and well maintained, pretty much smooth cruising all the way till we hit toll stations. The first one was non-eventful. It looked like any of those automated toll collectors in the States, except everything in French. I put in my credit card and it displayed payment amount and waited a few seconds for receipt but nothing came. Then I noticed a green button next to the card slot, presto, a receipt dropped out.  Not that hard… until the next one about an hour later. After I put in my credit card, it pushed it right out. I thought I saw a display in amount of the toll but not sure and this time, there is no green button. I looked around, the stop light was green. I am not sure it had been green or just turned green. Am I supposed to go?  Did I pay? Nobody around. I pulled ahead and stopped the car by the side and saw a young guy walked by. I tried to talk to him but apparently he didn’t speak English. He pointed to a building a short distance away to which I guess is the office. I walked in and through several layers of windows, finally got the attention of one of the two girls inside. She came over and we started talking, in our own ways, in fact to ourselves, as apparently nobody could understand the other. After about ten minutes, she was clearly frustrated and went to a computer. Then it hit me, “wait!”, I gestured to the best of my ability, “I will be right back”. I just remembered that I had enabled on my iPad, not only a GPS driving app, but also global 3G roaming. With iPad in hand I came back, proudly typed in what I wanted to ask her and Google translator did its magic. In 2 minutes I came out, walking tall and started pondering about climbing Mount Everest.
That feeling didn’t last very long after we spent next half an hour looking for a place to eat. The few restaurants that were open all packed with long waiting lines, in the small town by the toll exit. We ended up going to KFC, which was a nice change anyway. I don’t remember ever taking kids to one before so that was good. The food was actually better than most US fast food chains and tasted pretty decent. Of course the price is better than US junk foods as well, about twice as much if I remember correctly, with drink cup about half of the medium cup you would typically found in the States.  But kids were happy and the place was not crowded (actually pretty much empty).

This detour basically put an end to my original plan of going over to Barcelona (if you go there, make sure to visit its Mediterranean beach), so we opted to stop at Nabonne and paid a quick visit to the beach. It was a good decision and we had lots fun in this old town filled with historical landmarks. Here I got my parallel parking tested for the first time in a long while, managed to squeeze in between tightly parked cars, with no more than 6 inches extra space. My wife laughed hysterically for a long time, even after I successfully emerged from the car. I didn’t think it was that funny. Oh well, women!
The sky was brilliantly blue with few clouds here and there. Sunday wasn’t a busy day apparently, neither at tour sites or on the Mediterranean beach we visited. It gave me a surreal feeling as if it were merely a dream at times, until I got power punched unexpectedly from behind by one of the wild goblins.

Time went by rather quickly when you had fun. We got back to Toulouse in total darkness and bought our dinner from roadside restaurants and crashed to bed shortly afterward.










(to be continued)

来个真人秀吧，不愿意正面出镜，侧脸也OK。实在不行的话，再退一步，来个背影。。。。。 ...
luckypanda 发表于 2010-10-27 12:35

既然姊姊点到了，那就先来一张插个队吧，恭敬不如从命呗，谁让俺石心眼呢。。。

WSN，我猜你肯定和人家正面合影了吧？
maomaobiao 发表于 2010-10-28 09:09

孤陋寡闻，ＷＳＮ？
真人不说假话，没有。。。来得及。

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－－－
(Driving over)
Wife and kids went to various places the next two days while I went on my own business at meetings.  They had fun taking a cruise on the old canal, wondered around the city, in and out of different stores and parks. Toulouse is the 5th largest city in France, so it has its fair share of hustling and bustling and homeless people, and of course, dog poops. They seem like everywhere for some reason. It might be that we walked mostly instead of driving, as besides parking, driving in narrow alleys is not very enjoyable even to me. There’s a big university in town, which might explain why there seemed to have young kids out at night all the time, just hanging, by the river bank, outside restaurants, outside metro stations, bus stations, or just a light post. Lots people are smoking, as if every girl smokes too! It is worth mentioning that a lot of them are in very nice shape, especially considering where I came from (hint: obese capital of the States). I guess smoking probably helps quite a bit. Then again, walking from everywhere to everywhere won’t hurt either. My wife said at the end of the trip, that the amount of walk we did in France in a week is probably more than 10 years worth in the States.  European cities reminded me a lot of upcoming Chinese cities or maybe it should be the other way around. You can tell that China got more influence from Europe than United States. The most obvious to me is the hotel rooms, the setup from the toiletry to amenity especially the slippers. I’ve never seen any hotels in the States offering slippers and I’ve traveled to probably 40 out of the 50 including Alaska and Hawaii. And this walking is yet another example. A lot of people relies on public transportation at both places, and you just carry your grocery bags around and catch a sub and such. Most people in the States would be driving to the supermarket and loaded it up the cart, push to your car in the parking lot and unloading from your garage. No wonder we are fat!
I digress. The next stop is Paris. I’ve heard interesting things before I headed over. At the meeting, one guy told me that he’d be heading over to Paris as well, not something planned. What happened was that he was in Paris 6 months ago and got his luggage stolen on the train. It was like a movie scene. Some guy accidently dropped his carried bag and money went all out and over. You probably know that the paper notes in euro are 5 and up, so 1 and 2 euros are all coins (not sure about 5 now come to think of it). People started grabbing or helping, and there was chaos for a few minutes. When it’s all said and done, he noticed the briefcase that was on the rack just above his head is now gone. It has his computers, passport and money etc. He immediately reported to the conductor and they looked over the videos and saw the guy(s) who did it. Yes you guessed it, it was a setup. But they didn’t stop the train and seal and search everybody. The surprise came a day earlier that Paris police actually found his stuff and wanted him to go over and identify and pick them up. Mental note to self: be careful!
Then there is another development prior to my scheduled departure. My host in Paris politely reminded me that most people in France, such as those live in Toulouse, never drive to Paris. They always fly. That got me worried. Well, I plan on leaving the next day and it’s kind of late to buy tickets, especially 4 of them. How about trains? Hmm, that can be arranged easily for 4 people but it’ll take about the same amount of time than driving. Adding up the transfer time to and from the station, it’s not worth the trouble. I prefer driving to flying but with family with me, in a strange place, I am not very comfortable, mainly because of safety. After much back and forth, I decided to drive. The last straw that tipped over the scale was the planned national strike. More on that late.
The actual driving (da tour) is not bad at all. The weather was perfect. The road was nice and smooth, with very little traffic until we hit outskirts of Paris. The signs are well placed and marked, better than a lot of places in the States (by the way, don’t try to drive in Hawaii). After hitting 3 tolls within 2 hours, I began to understand why the French don’t drive. The toll alone is more than the cost of a plane ticket! And the gas prices! Easily four times to that in the States.





《《背影》》

WSN = 猥琐男 or 猥琐女

“没有。。。来得及” what a shame, dude
maomaobiao 发表于 2010-10-29 12:22

这是传说中的新新人类词汇？俺用ＩＮＴＥＲＮＥＴ快２０年了，还是第一次听说呢。你该不是９０后吧？ 那你要孩子可够早的 ｊｕｓｔ ｋ／ｄ

It took about 7 hours driving over, with stops here and there. It's about to get dark when we first saw the Eiffel tower from the highway. My wife was really excited and so were the kids. I think to the kids, France equals the tower. Driving into Paris, it gave me the strange impression of that I am  driving in New Orleans. I think you will agree with me, by simply taking a look at the pictures we took. Of course, the big difference is not the colors of the skin, rather than the size of the rear end. Chances of seeing a slim figure is as high as not getting drunk on Bourbon street at night. Come to think of it, it makes perfect sense, as Louisiana was part of France until not too long ago.


We go to the hotel just before the darkness swallowed the differences between those old trees and old buildings. Our hotel is right in the middle of Paris, few minutes walk to Notre Dame, Seine river, and the Louvre amongst other tourist attractions. There is a parking garage about 5 minutes from the hotel and the hotel manager strongly advised parking my car there during my stay and use public transportation. This is the same advice I got from my host so I followed with no resistance. The exit of the garage seemed rather strangely oriented, away from the entrance which has about quarter of a mile drive to begin with. So I opted to walk back to the entrance I came in with. A bit scary using the narrow sideway against traffic but at least this way it's shorter and I won't get lost in the rapid falling darkness.

The hotel room is supposedly big, from what I heard when I made the reservation and we were pleasantly surprised by how big it is. It has a queen size bed, two double beds and a small kitchenette area, dining table and still plenty place to walk around, even with all suitcases opened. This is rather relaxing after our cell block experience in Toulouse. I would say this is about the suite room size in the States, probably even larger than Hilton's two room suites. There are tons of restaurants just outside the hotel doorway, from Mom and Pop stores, to bakeries, to fast food like McDonald's, and sit down restaurants and bars. Nobody wants to sit down for another hour or two, so we ordered some takeouts from roadside setups, Chinese, and Lebanese I think. Some said there is bad restaurants in Paris. I don't know yet, at least these are eatable to me. Kids didn't like them very much, however. Then again, they didn't like the food at one of the highly recommended restaurants in Toulouse neither. And I thought that was pretty good.

(the Louvre)

The next morning, I got up early and went on with my business. It was the national strike day which is common these days, and my host had suggested me keep the car in the garage and take the metro to get outside Paris, where he'd pick me up and drive me to his company. Most of the metro was not on strike so that would be the best option, as the strike would usually block certain streets and makes driving difficult even with GPS, since lots cars would be cramped into fewer streets inside Paris.

By the time I got back to my hotel, it was already dark outside, as we had to change our schedule a little bit due to new development the next day. Basically we push two days' schedule into one. I was rather tired when I got back to the room. There was food on the table, obviously for me but nobody in the room. As we did not enable our phones, I had no idea of where they were, although my wife emailed me earlier that day mentioned a show at night in Notre Dame. I went to the front desk and learned that they asked about the direction to a local market. Feeling nervous, I went out and followed the direction but after 20 minutes, I gave up and came back. There weren't back yet! Now my stomach started to tighten. It's dark outside and what are they doing?! After checking with the front desk again, I realized that I misunderstood the direction the first time, in part because I was in a hurry. The clerk's poor English did not help the case either. Anyway, I went back and searched again and found nobody. When I got back to the hotel, I heard the kids shouting and running towards me. "Dad, where did you go?!" WHERE DID I GO? It's probably a good idea to skip the rest of the story about where the miscommunication started and where it ended. It's suffice to say that nobody was really thrilled about what happened but we agreed on this should not happen again. So much for the nightshow at Notre Dame. Apparently, the kids kept their biological clocks rather well, and had been sleeping till past 10am ever since they got to France. By the time they finished breakfast/lunch, it was almost noon time so they just walked over to visit nearby sites including the world heritage Notre Dame (remember that movie?). I had no idea what Notre Dame means until shortly before I came here. I knew the name in Chinese. I knew the word Notre Dame in terms of university name. But these never got associated until now. I saw the pictures they took, which brought back some memories from the movie I saw when I was a kid. But I was not in the mood to have a late night tour at this hour so we called it the day.


Like clock work, the kids did not wake up until 10 after again. It's a good thing we had decided against buying the museum pass as many on the Internet suggested. It might be a great idea if you are on a tight schedule to visit Paris for a day or two, and can follow the routine. It's not practical for us, especially when the parents (that's us) want the kids to get enough sleep every day. Anyway, what's the plan for today? Hmmmm.. how about the Louvre? Sure, why not. So off we went.

It took about 10 minutes walking to get to the museum entrance from our hotel, with stops here and there to take pictures, while kids running around to chase pigeons or play newly invented games from their creative minds. After spending some time taking pictures of everybody and combinations imaginable, it hit me that one of the reasons they said to buy the pass is because you don't have to wait in long times to get into the Louvre. LONG LINES? I looked around. Yup, there is one alright and it is rather long. So it's best we start standing in line sooner than late. The wife stood there while I walked around with kids snapping pictures of buildings and kids and Louis the XIV and his horse etc etc. While I was walking over after 10 minutes, I noticed the angry wife staring at me from the entrance. Uh oh. What did I do now? "where did you go?!" was the dangerous greeting. Apparently my assumption was wrong. This line was not to buy the tickets, but rather to enter the glass pyramid which serves as the entrance to the museum ticket windows down below!