Tour de France

照片都不错。

还挺逗的呢，和加油站的法国mm没挑个情什么的？

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？

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。

LASTE DISCLAIMER: all writings are copyrighted by SUIM. Nonprofit redistributions are allowed on the condition that original site (zhiyoucheng.com) and author must be credited.
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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》》

孤陋寡闻，ＷＳＮ？
真人不说假话，没有。。。来得及。
SUIM 发表于 2010-10-29 08:48

WSN = 猥琐男 or 猥琐女

“没有。。。来得及” what a shame, dude

一家四口旅行，真爽啊。

巴黎的情况也挺夸张的嘛，快赶上中国了。哈哈

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。。。
...
SUIM 发表于 2010-10-27 19:51

太没诚意鸟～ 来张真人兽嘛。。。。。。

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!