Big Sky Country

Devon and I arrived yesterday to Montana for a conference I presented at. Here are some pics he took today while snowboarding(click to enlarge):





I know- its a rough life when you have to go to a ski resort for work ;).

Tar Tar Toulouse

So today is the last day of meetings- I haven't been sleeping well the past 2 nights, so I am very tired and glad this trip is coming to a close, its been good and fun, but l o n g.

The gastronomical adventure continued today with salmon tar tar and veal. The tar tar topped the meal, surprisingly, not that that says much... The veal was disgusting. As with all the other food adventures, this was not by choice... It was the set menu from the customer we were visiting. The previous foods tried were a combination of the same and pure peer pressure from my French colleague. :)

Killing time...

I'm sitting at a coffee shop this morning as we are quite early for a meeting... thought I would post a few things that haven't made it into previous posts:

• This trip has been a gastronomical adventure for me... lots of wine (including Moroccan), duck, couscous (I liked- reminds me of a variation on stew), salmon (pretty good, but salty), a strange pork sausage (glorified hot dog if you ask me) with a SPICY French mustard, a traditional French dish consisting of Navy beans, goose, and duck cooked in the duck drippings (ehh, not bad), and I can't remember what else (wearing a bit thin mentally as we near the end of the trip, I guess)... so of course yesterday I had to sneak in a piece of pizza from an airport Pizza Hut to balance this out :) -- the only thing I've refused is fish soup
  
• My suitcase is holding up well, despite LOTS of miles. I bought it a while ago at Dillards for just $75. Christophe's suitcase on the other hand has 1.5 wheels... its like a cowbell, I can hear him coming from a mile away.
  
• I finally made it through airport security yesterday (in Norway) without a pat down... not that I changed anything... proving airport security is a joke
  
• I've concluded that I don't "look" American because everyone talks to me in French first, and it takes them a while to understand the blank stare I'm giving them
• And finally, the biggest takeaway from this trip is to NEVER rent from Europcar if one has a choice... worst customer service ever.
  

Norway -- way cool (cold, too!)

Loved Oslo- hope we can have further discussions so I can go back and explore more. The weather was 30ish, snowing pretty good today. Here are some pics:

Cannes, Amsterdam, Paris - check

Things have been quite busy since the last post. Today is the first day I haven't been on a plane or in a airport since Monday - a much needed break from the repetition of showing boarding passes, passports, and being patted down by security (I now understand the terms perfectly for "May I search you?, Spread your arms, Please turn around, etc" as I have not been through security once in Europe without it.)

Wednesday night, we flew from Toulouse to Nice, and then drove 45 minutes to Cannes. It was dark by the time we landed, so I couldn't see much. We ate at a cute little restaurant by the marina, just a short walk from our hotel. Bed was much appreciated that night, and I got my first view out my balcony:

From cannes and paris

We spent the whole day in meetings, and got to see a little bit of the city on the drive back to Nice that evening. The streets were lined with high end shops like Prada and we drove by the theater where the Cannes Film Festival is held. I would love to go back and spend more time there.

Amsterdam was much the same, except we spent even less time there, around 12 hours. The weather was drizzly and foggy, so we couldn't see much and I didn't get any pictures. We could make out a few windmills on the very flat farmland.

We got to Paris around 10pm last night, and had major issues getting the rental car. Chris's drivers license from Washington DC had been renewed in 2008, and the crazy Europcar attendant thought it meant he just got his license then and wouldn't rent him a car... so we tried to rent under my name, but she couldn't do basic math and though I was under 25 so wanted to charge us a fee... THEN, we got to the car lot and had to drag our luggage down 3 floors of a parking garage. Was hilarious to hear Chris cussing his native France. He understands why Americans hate it so much!

The architecture here is such a contrast to Toulouse - both pretty in their own right, but while Toulouse is red/pink, Paris is mostly white stone buildings with intricate detailing. We ate a very late meal at a brasserie which serves very homey, not the stuffy stuff one typically thinks of for French cuisine. The restaurant where we ate, The Couple, is very famous (Hemingway did much of his writing there) and usually serves 800 people a night, but the economy is hitting them hard, so last night was only 500. The seating was close from table to table, and we sat next to a couple in their 30s. Chris talked in French to them most of the time about the French socialist politics and answered many questions about America, which they were very interested in. I meanwhile sat there and tried to look interested, despite not understanding much of anything (and cursing Gatesville High for not offering French.)

Here are several pictures from my walk around the city today:

From cannes and paris

From cannes and paris

For fun, I decided to try to pic a building I would want to live in - this tops the list:

From cannes and paris

One of my favorite things about Paris is all of the flower shops on the street:

From cannes and paris

From cannes and paris

From cannes and paris

From cannes and paris

From cannes and paris

And, having had no less than 3 glasses of wine a day since being here (until today), I couldn't resist this picture:

From cannes and paris

From cannes and paris

From cannes and paris

Interestingly, there is a law against destroying the front of any building here, so when people want to build something new, like a fitness center in this case, this is what they do:

From cannes and paris

Notre Dame in the distance:

From cannes and paris

From cannes and paris

One of the few brick buildings I saw:

From cannes and paris

I also spent a lot of time ducking into little shops. Being such a food-focused country, there are lots of little culinary shops that have such pretty china, napkins, dish towlels, etc. I especially enjoyed: http://www.genevievelethu.fr/en/ctry_1/choixEspace.php.


Tomorrow we fly to Oslo Norway for a night. Tonight, the weather there is 17 degrees F and snowing. Luckily, tomorrow and Monday the temperature range is 26-30 degrees, but still snowing. There are only 10 hours of daylight there right now, so I do hope we get to see something. :)

-L

TaTa Toulouse - til we meet again

We arrived in Toulouse yesterday around noon. After checking into the hotel, we (my French colleague Christophe and I) ventured out in search of some food. He knew of this wonderful little creperie behind an old church, not too far from our hotel, which is right beside City Hall, a beautiful old palace (see pic below). During the French Revolution, a lot of old palaces were claimed by the government and turned into City Halls.



The walk was so nice- this is a beautiful town. The majority of the buildings are red brick with red clay tile roofs- they say it glows pink when the sunsets.













And here is one of our chef at the creperie, where we had a ham and egg dark crepe (similar to an omelet) and dessert of a dark chocolate crepe (yummy!):


We will be back in Toulouse at the same hotel later in the week- I am definitely looking forward to it. I like this town!

Bonjour Paris!

Had a great flight- whole row to myself so I laid down and got some pretty good sleep. Looks like I will make the connection, too! Had a nice frisking at security, but other than that, went as smoothly as possible. Its 9am here, and a drizzly 42 deg F.

Headed for France!

I'm sitting at the Houston Airport, waiting on a flight to Paris- 9 hours of fun, then hit the ground running to hopefully make my tight connection to Toulouse. I don't come back until the 5th, and don't spend more than 2 nights in a row in one city! I will be bouncing between:
Toulose, Cannes, Paris, Oslo (Norway), and Amsterdam. Camera is packed, and I will try to post pics and updates frequently!