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)

期待更新，更多照片。

虽然英文看着累。呆几天啊？

题目有点标题党的嫌疑。我就说这时候哪来的环法嘛？呵呵

玩的开心点。

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)

是游记？

- -老外 or  。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。  复制的？？？

- -老外 or  。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。  复制的？？？
wl23th 发表于 2010-10-26 22:20

是楼主SUIM自己写的啦

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。。。。。[s:167]