All My Paris Pics

If you've been following me and want to scroll through a ton of fun pics, enjoy....

--Josh

Postscript: Paris

Thursday was for all intents and purposes the end of my trip.  The conference had a few morning sessions, and the requisite anti-climactic announcement that next year's conference will be in the Washington DC "area" (whoopee).  I'm not sure I'll be doing a travel blog from that trip.  By the way no incidents on the way to the airport (took the Air France bus) and my flight was smooth and uneventful.
Here are my general observations of Paris:

• With the exception of the server at the Paul Bakery everyone who served us, gave us directions, drove us, or interacted on the street were more than friendly.  Even if they didn't speak a word of English, they were nice about it.  
• Paris is obscenely expensive.   No way around that. 
• The Lourve is like the 9th wonder of the world.  Between that and the Vatican Museum they could lift everyone in the world out of poverty if they sold those pieces.
• If you could get lost somewhere, Paris is the place to do it.  You will run into something spectacular without even trying
• Never take the RAR in Paris unless you absolutely have to
• On the other hand, the Tram and the Metro are wonderful travel options
• When will the US wake up and get smart card credit cards?
• I LOST 2 pounds in 11 days.  If you have been reading this blog you may wonder how is that possible?   Well its the French paradox I guess.  Plus a ton of walking.
• Paris is under construction...constantly.  How else can you explain the Picasso museum being closed for 3 years?
• Parisians do not understand decaf
• Tips are included in Paris;   the wait staff are professionals and are paid that way

Last night we had a very nice quiet dinner at home.   I was looking at my plate of brown rice, chicken and tomatoes from the garden.  Normally a fine dinner....but what can I say...once you've flown 1st class, how can you go back to coach?   But it was at least economy plus, cause I ran out and got a lovely bottle of Cote Du Rhone....

Until the next big trip, thanks for reading!

Wednesday Sept 19 in Paris

Jardin du Luxembourg

Entering the Musee

My team award at ICCC

I woke up feeling good about my presentation.  I had decided to spend an hour working on it the night before, and had added some humor to the talk to make it more interesting to the audience.     The day went by quick and my talk came at 2:30.  Only about 30 in the audience, but that was ok, I had a message to deliver.  I couldn't believe how relaxed I was;  I think the Toastmasters program I've been doing at CA had helped alot plus I really knew the topic.     The talk went really well and I just felt a tremendous sense of relief.     So I decided to go for a run through Paris to just have sometime to my thoughts and just take advantage of the beautiful day.  I ended up at the Jardin du Luxembourg which apparently is the 2nd largest garden in France.   It was something you could only run into literally in Paris.     When I got back to the hotel, I felt much more relaxed and I posted a blog and got ready for the Gala dinner.  The Gala dinner was held at the Musee des Arts Forains, a private museum of carnival and fair objects.  It actually was alot of fun!  There were games, merry go-rounds and for food we started off with all you can eat Foie Gras and Champagne Cocktails.   Then the main course was steak barely grilled (bloody and kicking), potatoes with melted cheese and bacon, a make your own omelet bar (sort of) and the bar changed over to wine.  They also had a huge cheese bar, and I heard they were vegetables, but I never saw em.  Honestly I never saw dessert, because I was too busy having fun.    I also received a certificate for my efforts on the Enterprise Security Management Protection Profile initiative.
I made the mistake of staying at the bar back at the hotel with my friends until 1:30 am....I paid for that the next morning, which was also my travel day home.

Tuesday Sept 18 in Paris

Now the work portion of my trip was taking on phase 2.  Last week was what they called the Pre-Conference Workshops and this week was the actual conference.  I again was presenting, but it was a topic I knew very well.   I was also planning on attending several sessions and doing the usual networking with the "Common Criteria" world.  
Now the Pullman Hotel was kind of a shabby hotel quite frankly for the price.  It was old, and was purchased by the Pullman Hotel company and I would describe it as being refaced.    The conference was in the usual format with a not very interesting (to me) set of plenaries and panel however the host was a local celebrity a Sophie (I will get her last name).  She had absolutely no clue about the Common Criteria or IT security so when she actually moderated the panel on mobile security, and went off her cue cards its was of course quite funny.    But she ended up at my table during lunch, and I realized she was actually quite smart;  she knows five languages and used her French charms to make what could have been a very dry program memorable.
My business side went very well with meetings and sessions (if you are interested in my views on that aspect, I'll be posting my impressions on the CC conference on my work blog in the next couple of weeks.
That night, my old friend Eric took me to dinner to mostly discuss business.  I wanted to go back to the Isle of St. Louis that Amy and I had walked through over the weekend.  We ended up at a little restaurant called  L'llot Vache.     My camera battery was dead so no food pics but I can tell you that I started with a smoked salmon over salad, then grilled lamb chops, cheese and for dessert, I have absolutely no memory of what it was but I remember it was very good.  It was again a Pris Fix menu by the way.  

Monday Sept 17 in Paris

Our wake-up call was at 6:30 am.  Amy's flight on Air Canada was at 11am out of Charles De Gaul (CDG).     It seemed like if we hopped on the train by 7:30am she would be there before 9am...considering she wasn't checking luggage and had her boarding pass that would be plenty of time.  My plan was to get her on the RAR B direct to the Airport then shoot back to my hotel, check out and head to the Pullman.  I would then drop my bag and go to the CA offices (where-ever they were).    We were really out the door by 7:15 and everything seemed to be going just to plan.  We took the RAR from La Defense, changed and headed down to the RAR B.  It was way more crowded then I expected.   An announcement in French came on the loud-speaker and I heard some groans.   A very nice French woman then told us in English that there is was a strike today and that the next stop (Gar De Nord) was the last stop.  We would need to get out and get on the 350 bus which would take us directly to CDG.  We looked at each other, and decided we would try it, and see.  The train came and they filled it to capacity it waited for about 10 minutes to do that.     It took 30 minutes to go one stop.   We got out got out of the station and it was mass chaos.  The bus stop was five deep and no buses were there (we heard later that it stopped at all 10 remaining stations before arriving at CDG so Amy would definitely miss her flight).    It was now already 8:45am.   I then said lets grab a cab.    Flagging didn't work--too many people with the same idea.  Then we went to the taxi stand and that was five rows deep.  Plus taxis weren't stopping at the stand.  If they were empty they were gobbled up quickly.    I told Amy to wait at the stand and I would run around the corner to try and flag one down.  I then almost wiped out as I stepped in wet dog shit. I came back to the stand...Amy had found 3 people that would share a cab...but that didn't matter there weren't any to be had.  It was now 9:15.  I told Amy lets go, and said good bye to her friends...I had an idea.   We went back into the train station and got on the next train to anywhere but Gar De Nord.     We got out...a taxi appeared in front of us and I waved it down.  After 10 seconds of negotiations, he agreed to take her.  After a quick stop at the ATM, I kissed her goodbye and sent her to CDG.  I didn't find out till hours later that she made her plane (but I had a good feeling about it because she hadn't called).

3 Varieties of Oysters

Yves Sea Bass

Lovely Petit Chablis

Napoleon

Rum Bomb

Menu

Mussels

Fab Seafood Restaurant

Scallops

I headed back to La Defense (avoiding the RAR like the plague) packed up and found out that that the CA offices were in La Defense!    I left my bag at the hotel and walked over to our offices.  I worked the whole day there.  That night my colleague Yves took me out to a fantastic seafood restaurant near my new hotel, the Pullman in Montparnesse.     This was a Pris Fixe Menu which included a bottle of wine, 18 Oysters on the Half Shell, then an entree (I had scallops), and for dessert I finally had my Napoleon!  Yves ordered this crazy dessert, called the Rum Bomb.   You get a bottle of Rum, and Sponge Cake. You add as much rum as you want it and gets sopped up by the sponge.  He also poured some in our coffee (they just leave the bottle!)
By that point, I knew Amy had made it, and was ready for the next stage of my trip, the conference, which would begin on Tuesday.

Sunday night Sept 16 in Paris

We headed back to the hotel and I wrote Saturday's entry while Amy perused the Fodors and the web looking for places for dinner.  One problem was that many places are closed on Sunday nights.   So the first few restaurants we selected were not available.    Finally we decided on a very small restaurant called  L'Ardoirse in the Tuilleries area of Paris (which the hotel reserved for us at a very French time of 9:30pm).    L'Ardoise means "The Slate" which essentially means that the menu is changing all the time.  The bistro was packed when we arrived and we waited a bit before we sat down.  It was like flying coach but eating 1st class food--once you sat on the inside against the wall you were in for the night.   Tables had to be pulled out to release the inside guest.

Duck with Honey

Lemon Tart

Marscapone and Yellow Plum

Rabbit

Tuna Carpaccio

Fois Gras Pate

As is typical in Paris, you ordered your complete meal, app, main course and dessert right in the beginning.  The wine list was extensive, but we each ordered by the glass (red).  I ordered a Smoked Tuna and Espadon Carpaccio, Rabbit, and a Marscapone and Plum dessert.   Amy had Fois Grais, Duck in Honey Sauce, and a Lemon Tart.     The rabbit was just ok, but I loved my starter and dessert.   Amy's duck was fantastic.   Below are pics of the meal.   The atmosphere was so fun because of the close quarters, and it seemed like the entire restaurant was filled with Americans, each with their own stories that we all shared with each other.  For us, it was a fantastic wrap to an amazing weekend.  My trip of course was not over, I had another week to go.  But Amy was headed back in the morning.

Sunday Sept 16 in Paris (Erev Rosh Hoshanah)

I got up around 8.    We had a big day planned and we couldn't waste it on beauty sleep.  My legs were sore, but I was glad for the exercise considering what we had been eating.  We still had no idea what we were going to do for our anniversary dinner, but we figured it would come to us eventually.
First after shower, we decided that we were going to spend the morning walking around the Jewish Quarter (which is in Le Marais) and would have brunch there.    Fodor's recommended that people avoid Le Loir dans la Thelere because of the long lines for brunch.  That to me signaled that we had to try it.  We got there and it was deserted (I think Parisians do not have Brunch at 10am.   It was a Prix Fixe Menu with fab bread a choice of eggs, home-made applesauce, yogurt, fresh squeezed orange juice for 18 Euro each (and of course coffee).    It was just the right start to our day.  By the way, the name translates to "Dormouse in the Teapot (from Alice in Wonderland).     By the time we left, there was a line outside.
We then decided to go the Picasso Museum, which was close by.   Unfortunately, even though my borrowed from the library Fodor's 2011 said that the renovations were scheduled to complete by February of 2012, it was behind schedule and shockingly won't open until the summer of 2013.
We shopped around for a while surrounded by the smell of Falafels and Jewish bakeries.   There was some really fantastic live Jewish music which I filmed (and the link to that is below).

Entrance to the Holocaust Memorial

Musee Carnavalet courtyard

Disappointed but not discouraged, we then decided to find the Shoah Memorial, which was close by.  Given that the Jewish New Year was that night, and we weren't really doing anything, we felt that it would be a good thing to spend some time there.      When you walk in there is a Wall of Names that contains a list of the 76,000 French Jews deported from France by the Nazis to the concentration camps (only 2500 survived).  There is also a children's memorial and an eternal flame in the crypt of the building.  Since I've never been to the Holocaust museum, I found this particularly moving.  After about 30 minutes or so, we were ready to move on, and we just started walking around.    We ran into the Musee Carnavalet which documents Paris history.  Unfortunately it stopped in the 17th century as the rest of the museum was closed for renovations.      It was still very charming (and free) and we enjoyed sitting in the courtyard and looking at our map for our next jaunt.

Clock Photo in D'Orsay

At that point, we decided we had to do something big and headed via Metro to the Musee D'Orsay.    This is the museum that has all the Impressionists including Monet, Manet, Renoir etc.  Its in an old train station essentially across the Seine from the Lourve.   We bought our tickets outside of the museum at a news stand, again saving time from the lines.   I'm not sure why more people don't do this, the cost was actually 50 cents LESS then through the museum.   We started at the top and made our way down, seeing one masterpiece after another.  They have this cool clock at the top (actually there are two) that reminded me of the clock from the movie Hugo.  We had someone take a pic of us in front of it, and it  came out a bit of a silloutte but still nice.  At that point it was 5pm, and we still hadn't decided about our dinner plan.  Plus I wanted to get changed.   So we headed back to La Defense to rest up and plan our 20 year anniversary dinner in Paris.  You will hear about that....tomorrow.  Meantime, enjoy the  video of the Street Performers...

Saturday, Sept 15 in Paris

We slept in.  I think if it wasn't for the cleaning ladies singing in the hallway, we might still be asleep.  By the time we got out the door, it was 10:30 and our day seemed impossible:

• Breakfast
• The Lourve
• Lunch
• Notre Dame
• Boat cruise
• Dinner

We went across the street to the mall to make our plan.   The Paul bakery is an iconic chain of "boulangeries" so when we saw it on Friday we had tried it but we had encountered our 1st crabby Parisian. So today we avoided "Paul" and grabbed some fruit, yogurt and bread from a small establishment in the Mall.   The meal the night before was quite heavy, and I was determined to eat lighter today.   It was a straight shot to the Lourve from La Defense so we took the Metro.   Fodors says that savvy travellers by their tickets for the Lourve from the mall below.  We did that and were quite surprised how much time we saved.

The Lourve has three sections and is shaped like a "U."   The three wings are:

• The Richelieu Wing which contains Dutch masters, Frence painting and sculpture among the highlights.
• The Sully Wing which has an amazing collection of Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities and the Venus de Milo
• The Denon Wing, contains Mona Lisa, Winged Victory and tons of Italian paintings

The Lourve Pyramid

I'm sure I'm selling these sections short but that's what we had;  short time.   The pyramid was completed after I had been here the last time (1987) and was featured in the movie and book "The Da Vinci Code."  Its actually the main entrance and where the long lines are typically found.

Mona Lisa

The Lace Maker

After Mona we headed to Venus de Milo.  This is a We decided to head for the Denon Wing;  the Fodors gave a path to quickly get to Winged, Mona, and then see Venus all in short order so we started down that path.     We ran into Winged right away.  Of the three iconic pieces, this is my least favorite.   But I think I'm more of a painting guy vs sculpture. Of course the road to Mona was stunning with all the Italian classics.    The many ways Christ died and was reborn; and amazingly looks like a pale Italian.   Mona is of course smaller than you may think and you can't really get that close.   But they do let you take pictures as long as you don't use flash.   really beautiful sculpture, stunning face to face in many ways.     After that we spent a lot of time just wandering around the museum.  One challenge was that the cut through to get to the Richelieu Wing was closed on all floors due to construction.  So we walked for what seemed like miles just to get to that side.   Of course it has the iconic painting the Lace Maker which was done by the artist Vermeer.  A movie was made about Vermeer called "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" this was one of those paintings.











My personal favorite area in the entire museum was their enormous collection of Egyptian antiquities.    This includes sphinxes, sarcophogus, a statue of Ramses II

The Mummy

Ramses

  and a real mummy.  Since I've never been to Egypt (and I'm not sure that I will get there) this really fascinated me.   The mummy was very small so either a child or a very small man (under 5').    The science of how they preserved people this way is still one of the most amazing achievements in human history, in my opinion.
After about two and a half hours we decided that we had other things to do, and we made our way out of the Lourve.     Our plan was to walk to the Champs D'Elysse which is like the Fifth Avenue of Paris.  This turned to be like an hour walk through the Tuilleries (sort of the Public Gardens of Paris).   It was a beautiful day but we had essentially been on our feet for about four hours when we sat down for a very late lunch at a a Pizza place on the "Champs."    I had a Greek salad and Amy had a Salad Nicoise.    Both were really big and really good.  We then mosied our way up the Champs and hopped on the Metro to head to Notre Dame (lets go Irish).

French Cheese Shop

Notre Dame's Famous Gargoyles

The Cathedral of Notre Dame, with its Gargoyles and famous fiction (The Hunchback) is actually on an island in the middle of the Seine.  You access it via another island the Isle of St. Louis.  That island had this great street filled with cheese shops, ice cream and chocolates.   It was very touristy but was great fun to walk through.  Live music and entertainment also lined that street.  The smells in the area made us hungry, but again, we were worried about the time, so we kept on moving towards Notre Dame.    Eventually we got there, and like they say about the British, form a queue and eventually someone will stand behind you.  We got in line and were quickly told by a gruff woman that they weren't allowing anyone in anymore.  This was really discouraging, but we decided to go around to the front and take a couple of pics before we decided what to do next.   We then saw another line and realized that the first one was for something else (that turned out to be line to climb to the top of Notre Dame, which I again didn't get to do (when I visited the last time I only went to the Cathedral).   Admission to the Cathedral was free, and we queued up, passing young men and women offering "Free Kisses and Hugs" (still haven't figured out what that was about) and entered the Church.    Its very dark and they are piping in music that reminded me of some of the Lord of the Rings music.   After making the loop there, we regrouped and needed to figure out what to do next.    Amy really wanted to do a boat tour of the Seine.  But we just couldn't find it (either we were at the wrong dock or when we found the right one, they said they weren't taking any more passengers).  At that point we decided to go to dinner.   I wanted something light so eventually we ended up at Zen (Japanese food) near the Lourve.    It felt great to have something relatively light and the sushi was delicious.

We walked from Zen over the bridge to the St. Germaine district.   Here we were going to go to a cafe and at first we sat down and it just didn't feel right.  The view was blah and our table was bordered by a wall and a mirror.  So we moved and eventually ended up at Le Bonaparte.  Here we had a fab cheese course, along with a glass of Cote Du Rhone.  Of course as you can see, so much for the light eating of the day!  While we were sitting there we were entertained by this travelling band of, well I'm not sure how to describe it, but you should watch the video below.  Oh one final note, we had about 25% of the cheese left when some man comes right up and says "Fromage?"  I say sure and he takes most of the cheese.  Then Amy says, "don't forget the bread!"  Ah Paris....

Friday Sept 14 in Paris

I woke up, showered and headed straight to the train station.   It actually was going to be relatively easy to get Amy at the airport, but I wanted to be sure I got there with plenty of time to spare.   My phone was still not working and she didn't have one that worked here either, so we had to be precise about where we would meet.   I would be right there to greet her coming off the plane.    I spotted a Starbucks at the La Defense train station and snagged a Grande Soy Latte and a strawberry muffin--almost like home but the soy was not sweet.   France does not believe in non-sugar sweeteners; its sugar or nothing.
I got to Charles De Gaulle airport with about 30 minutes to spare....and then she landed about 15 minutes early.   45 minutes later Amy came off the plane.   She had my SIM card to see if I could get my phone going and I was thrilled that she made it safely.
We immediately took the train back to hotel.    She crawled into bed and I headed down to the lobby to work for a couple of hours.
After her nap, and a shower, we headed out.  1st place to go was the Rodin Museum.  They have 1 EURO admission for the garden only.  We got a little confused on the way there (we got off at the wrong Metro station).  We finally hopped in a cab.   By the time we got there it was 30 minutes before closing.  I had been here once before in 1987 and I posed before the thinker again, just as I did with my cousin Rosalind back when I was in college.   The museum is under construction and some statues had been moved around.  But not the Gates of Hell, its still there in all its glory.
We then decided to walk straight over to the Eiffel Tower.  Now I had never been to it (even though I had been to Paris twice before) so I was pretty excited.      We got in line and thought, wow this is easy.  But the line was for taking the steps.  Neither of us were up for that so we got in the long line for the elevator.  The elevators go up the pillars.   One of them leads to the Jules Verne restaurant, but that was not in the plans.   The other leads to the 1st floor, where you can catch a 2nd elevator to the top.   After an hour of waiting we finally got on the elevator.   The 1st view was great.  But the 2nd view was spectacular.      They offer champagne for people to buy and we each had one to celebrate our milestone and this trip.

Stuffed Pig

Floating Island

After the Eiffel it was time to find a place for dinner.   We walked around for a while looking for a Fodors recommended restaurant and it turned out to be out of business.    So we started looking at menus and we found a popular place called,  Le Fontaine Du Mars.  We waited a bit, but then they found us an outside table.    We split six escargot, then I had a "Stuffed Pig" and Amy had "Beef with Bernaise" sauce and Potato Au Gratin.  For dessert we split the "Floating Island, Fontaine De Mars (merengue with caramel in a sauce of creme anglais."    Day 2 awaited with the Lourve on the docket!.   Bonsoir!

Thursday Sept 13, Day 3 in Paris

This time the wake up call came on time and I hustled out the door.   Knowing that the Tram was so quick I decided that I'd get breakfast at a cafe near Microsoft.   I had to be in the offices by 9am so I grabbed a coffee and croissant to go.    I asked for an Americano, which was basically an expresso with water and some milk.   Meetings went well again.    I had the chance to call Amy with Erin's phone and we finalized some logistics.   I would pick her up at airport, we would train it to the hotel.

I was pretty tired so I probably over-caffeinated.   Lunch was salad and fruit--felt so much better.   Meetings were over at 5:30.   I headed out with Bryan and Erin.  We walked around for a while and finally landed in a little Lebanese restaurant, called Zahle.   I ended up having a middle eastern salad which was very refreshing (similar to a Greek salad) and a mixed grill of chicken and lamb kebabs.  After dinner I cabbed it home and watched some of a DVD that I had brought (season 5, disc one of The Shield).   I headed to bed knowing it was going to be a whirlwind weekend.

Wednesday Sept 12 (day 2 in Paris)

I woke up at 6:30 on Wed just naturally. I was feeling much better.  I had a wake-up call for scheduled for 7:30, but that never came (more on that later).   I had to be in the Cisco offices by 9:45.     A colleague pointed out (what I sort of knew) that I took a much more arduous route to the Issey stop then was necessary....I should have taken the Tram.  Now as I noted, I had pre-routed this trip and when I found that paper back on the desk here in the room, I saw that it was a straight shot, no changes from La Defense to Issey Val de Seine.   I went down and confirmed this with the Front desk.  They said it should be 25 minutes.  Well that sounded much better!  Armed with this information I left the hotel and started walking towards the Metro.   This time I veered to the right and walked into the Mall.  There was a Patisserie that I bought a cold ham quiche and coffee at.  Again, I could not find drip coffee, but I was fast becoming used to the expresso.    I took it to go and eventually found the entrance to the Tram.      This was a much better experience, although crowded (packed for sure for the 1st few stops) it was really only 22 minutes door to door.  So much for being way out of town!  The meetings went pretty well.  I have to say that the employee cafeterias (Tues and Thurs at Microsoft, and Wednesday at Cisco) were excellent.   I decided to eat a bit lighter for lunch and had salad, fruit, cheese and a bit of ham.  When the meetings were over, we headed over to the Pullman for a social hour with the government types that we were meeting with officially on Thursday.    After drinks I headed out to dinner with a new guy to the group Bryan and Rick who works at a company near CA.     We were walking down the street when we saw Helmut and Mike eating in a French restaurant called Le Petit Sommelier.

   Now this was a fantastic meal.  I started with a Beef Bourguignon then for dessert (yes just 2 courses, and it was more than enough) Grand Marnier Soufflet.  Conversation was interesting, wine was well, French and the price was about 40 Euros.   I took a cab back, too beat to hoof it.  And I also learned that walking around La Defense at night wasn't really advised.
When I got back to my room I had a note from the hotel apologizing for not providing the wake up call. They also gave me a bottle of Evian and a box of dark chocolates.  I went to bed knowing that I only had one more day of work before Amy arrived....

Tuesday (1st full day in Paris)

I didn't have to be at my meetings until 11:30am so I slept in to about 9:15 (I didn't even set a wake-up call).   I was really dead tired and it showed.   I didn't exactly feel right in the morning but after a shower I felt a bit better.   The morning commute would be complicated.  I had to make it from La Defense to the High Tech part of the city, "Issey."   The directions were from a different hotel (from the meeting organizer).  However, I had mapped it out from while I was home so I should have been ok.
Unlike when I got on the train on Monday, I did not stop at the concierge to confirm, I left my pre-printed plan in my room.  But of course one day in, I was confident that I knew what I was doing.  
I should have figured there was something wrong when I asked the information desk to confirm my route and he told me to guy buy a different ticket.  What I didn't realize (until today) was that I could have taken the Tram (designated by a T) which is like their version of the commuter rail.  I took that today, but  you will hear about that tomorrow....
Anyway I took the Metro to the RAR and between fits and starts ended up changing three times.   I ended up following a Cuban couple who were going to the Versailles Palace.   That happened to be the direction I was heading.
Let me explain what is so confusing about the trains:

• Multiple types of trains with multiple fair types
• Multiple zones with multiple fairs
• Don't speak French
• Incredibly poor signage
• They often don't announce the stop, never-mind the next stop.
• The trains either don't have signs or they show where they started (vs where they are going)

So what could have taken 25 minutes on the Tram took 90 minutes.  When I got out I had to wander around for another 20 minutes looking for the Microsoft offices (who were the hosts Tuesday and Thursday) which also had bad directions.  After really just nosing around and looking for people who spoke English (even if they didn't they really wanted to help), I finally stumbled upon the offices.

I arrived and finally got to my destination and everyone was at lunch.   Eventually the host brought me to the cafeteria and I joined the team for lunch.  The meetings went really well and we broke around 4ish.   I headed with a colleague, Erin to his temporary apartment (what a great idea) to take a few minutes and then go to dinner.  His daughter and son-in-law joined us (after I called Amy with his phone) and they were quite an interesting couple.  They were both in musical theater, young recently married unemployed actors.  I was particularly impressed with his daughter Colleen who did impressions and his son-in-law was "model handsome."     We ended up eating at a little Italian joint, Il Cantoncino which we stumbled upon.  I ended up having the Caprese Salad and Veal Marsala.    For dessert just fresh raspberries with a sprinkle of sugar. House red (probably Chianti) and lots of impressions.     Colleen was like a female version of Steve Coogan from "The Trip" doing Michael Caine.  Fun to be out with the youths of tomorrow!  It was late and I couldn't imagine navigating the train (after 10:30pm) so I took a taxi for 16 Euro.

So two days in without a phone, was doing fine!

To Paris! and Monday Sept 10.

First off, I'm writing this on Tuesday, so there is a lot to cover.  You'll excuse my  lateness in that I had a few issues to contend with.

As followers of this blog know,  I get to go on a cool trip to an interesting location as a part of my job.  Last year was in Kuala Lumpur, and this year, it was Paris.   Once I knew it was Paris and Amy and I would be celebrating our 20th anniversary in 2012, I just knew we had to make it happen that Amy would join me in Paris.   This year's International Common Criteria Conference also had a "Pre-Conference Workshop" which meant that I would be there for two weeks.    Unfortunately, I had to fly coach (I know I can hear all the sympathy violins) as the flight was only 5.5 hours and the minimum to qualify for business class is over 8 hours.
So Sunday night, I headed off to Logan knowing that Amy would be joining me a few days later.    The flight was unremarkable.  I did upgrade to "economy plus"  for a few more inches of leg room.   I actually was on the upper deck of the Air France 747 but you could tell it was an old plane.   I was on the Upper Deck of Virgin Atlantic last year in "Upper Class."  A vast difference for sure.   I barely slept so by the time I landed I was pretty exhausted.   However I was psyched that customs was basically a rubber stamp.   A little confusing...especially given the signage and the language issue.  Ah now let me explain one of my problems.  As soon as I landed I turned on my new Motorola Droid 4.   Its really a terrific phone and is Global in that its supposed to work anywhere.    But I was concerned immediately because it showed "no-service."   That meant I couldn't make calls, receive or send texts; and because its a smart-phone, I couldn't do email, or browse unless I found a WIFI hotspot.  I tried every setting and when I finally got to the hotel (I took a cab) I booted up my computer and found then International Verizon support line.   After spending 20 minutes or so debugging, the agent asked me to open my phone.  Lo and behold I was missing my "sim" card.  This meant I was dead for sure.   Verizon would send one to my home, but would not send it to Paris.   Either Amy would have to bring it to me or I would have to ask her to overnight it to me.  By the time I got it it would be Wednesday night and she was arriving on Friday; so I basically decided I would be phoneless for the week.
I then crashed for 2 hours.  I have learned that you take a 2 hour nap after a long flight, then try best to adjust to the time.   I emailed a few friends to see who was around for dinner;  Bill called me at the hotel and I decided to venture out and meet him.
Now my company stuck me out at the Renaissance La Defense.   Now the La Defense region is really far out from the main area of Paris--especially by train.  The main attraction of the La Defense area is La Grande Arche which is a monument and a building.  Its really impressive, but the rest of the area is like the Financial district in Boston or Chicago.  Just a bunch of tall building and zero charm.   So to see any interesting sites, its either a taxi or train.  And the train system is really complex.
For Monday's dinner, however I agreed to meet my friends at the Hotel Pullman Montparnesse where I would actually be staying the next week.   To be honest, the train ride was not too bad.   And the French were actually really helpful when I asked them.  But when I got there, I took a wrong turn, and what should have been a 5 minute walk turned out to be 20 minutes.   As helpful as the French were to me on the trains two people directed me in the wrong direction.  
It turned out that in addition to Bill, Rance and Mike would be joining me.  We decided to just walk around and look at menus.   Eventually we ended up at the La Rotunde.     We each ended up ordering from the Prix Fixe menu.    I had a tomato salad and grilled salmon.  Dessert was profiteroles with dark chocolate sauce.    The train ride back was uneventful and I collapsed as my lag nap expired.