Volleyball on the sand.
Mar. 18th, 2005 09:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jcfialaYesterday was an interesting one - I went to the beach again, visited a Virgin Megastore, and had Italian food.
The morning was nice - a slight chill in the air that I could tell would be gone by the middle of the day. I had breakfast at the buffet again in the hotel, and then came over to work.
The Buffet is a good thing for me - I just come in, they write down my room number, and then I can pick out what I want to eat. Unlike most American buffets, the food is pretty much all cold - various bits of French breads, plain croissants, chocolate croissants, fruit spreads, coffee, tea, dry cereals, milk, oj, various fruits, sliced ham and cheese, and I think some cottage cheese. I also think there are hard boiled eggs, but as I tend not to care for eggs I haven't tried them yet. The chocolate croissants are different than in America - instead of being covered with chocolate or filled with them, there are just small chunks of semi-sweet chocolate being mixed in here and there. It's a lot better, really.
For lunch yesterday I decided to get a sandwich delivered again, and chose the ham and cheese sandwich. It was good that I did, as we were invited to head out to the beach to play volleyball. Again, the area reminded me a lot of Ocean city - various small dwellings mixed in with 2-4 floor apartment buildings. Out on the sand here there were a number of nets set up for people's use, and after enough of us showed up we started a series of games. I'm not very good at Volleyball (not enough practice), but it was fun to join in with them. We lost two games and then won the third, although how well we were doing wasn't clear to me until everyone started to switch sides on the net.
That done we returned to work, where I set up my computer for more testing and use of the programs I'm to maintain and improve. Before I got to work, however, I saw my wife's comment in gmail to my last entry, and so knew she was awake. I called her up and we talked a bit before I let her return to packing, but it was nice to hear her voice.
That evening I decided to go back downtown and look around some more. One gentleman who teaches English to the programmers here sketched me a rough map of where I needed to get off of the tram, and I was hoping my trip would be more interesting than the last. At the last moment Eric decided to come with me, and we headed down to the tram. Arriving in the middle of a grand square (Place de la Comedie) overlooked by an old Opera house, we looked about - there was a two-level old-style carousel set up there (which Eric got a shot of) and then we walked about. There weren't a lot of French restaurants there, but there was a Subway (always a fallback), an Italian restaurant that looked interesting, and several 'Star Kabob' restaurants. I also found a Sushi restaurant, but Eric's not interested in that.
Walking around a bit, we again bemoaned the fact that all the stores close so early - 7pm and they shut down, making it difficult to shop when you get off work maybe as early as 6:30. However, the Virgin Megastore turned out to be open late, so we went browsing inside. Up front they had a display of small, inexpensive French-English, French-Italian, and French-German dictionaries, and I picked one up for myself. After that we looked about, although all of the books were in French. I did note the large display of 'Tintin' graphic novels, as well as a spread of 'Transmetropolitan' GNs. Other hardback books were full of comics as well, although the only one I could follow was a collection of blond jokes illustrated - and that because I could often recognize the joke.
However, I left that behind and left the store with my new dictionary, along with a small gift I picked up on impulse for a friend. That done we wandered back down to the square, where the carosel had shut down as well. We then headed down to the Italian restaurant, a cozy little place with red tablecloths sporting suns and moons. I think the first waitress was a little put off by our lack of French, and let the other one handle us - we were able to figure out what things were, mostly, but piercing bits together and then pointing to meals in the menu. We eventually ended up (by chance) getting the same thing - first a small salad with a bit of 'salmon salad', compressed into a block, followed by a very good piece of steak along with noodles with two different sauces. Very good, and reasonable portion sizes instead of the hugeness that America seems trapped in.
Before we ate, however, we stopped at MonoPrix. Although at first we thought it was a woman's clothing store, it turned out to be more of a general store - like Target, or Wal mart, with a small grocery attached. I went through the grocery to pick up a few items to snack on, and was proud of being able to go through it all without being (I thought) too obviously American. It helped that the amount was displayed instead of said out loud.
We returned to the square, where the tram was, just in time for the tram to leave without us. Looking at the display, we saw that the next tram wasn't for 11 minutes. Since Eric fancied some coffee, we returned to a small coffee store we'd passed. We originally thought it had closed, but we just didn't understand that you needed to push into the restuarant - we're used to american doors that always push out. Once that was worked out he had a cappuccino, and I had what was labeled a 'Toffee Coffee'. We agreed it was some of the best we'd had in a long time as we walked back to the tram stop with three minutes to go.
Returning home I played around with my computer, missing my precious internet, until it was time to sleep. I turned in early, actually, but then woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep, so I watched some stuff on my hard drive before returning to bed.
And tonight I get to see my wife again! She's flying out to visit me in Paris - I have train tickets and everything. I can't wait.
The morning was nice - a slight chill in the air that I could tell would be gone by the middle of the day. I had breakfast at the buffet again in the hotel, and then came over to work.
The Buffet is a good thing for me - I just come in, they write down my room number, and then I can pick out what I want to eat. Unlike most American buffets, the food is pretty much all cold - various bits of French breads, plain croissants, chocolate croissants, fruit spreads, coffee, tea, dry cereals, milk, oj, various fruits, sliced ham and cheese, and I think some cottage cheese. I also think there are hard boiled eggs, but as I tend not to care for eggs I haven't tried them yet. The chocolate croissants are different than in America - instead of being covered with chocolate or filled with them, there are just small chunks of semi-sweet chocolate being mixed in here and there. It's a lot better, really.
For lunch yesterday I decided to get a sandwich delivered again, and chose the ham and cheese sandwich. It was good that I did, as we were invited to head out to the beach to play volleyball. Again, the area reminded me a lot of Ocean city - various small dwellings mixed in with 2-4 floor apartment buildings. Out on the sand here there were a number of nets set up for people's use, and after enough of us showed up we started a series of games. I'm not very good at Volleyball (not enough practice), but it was fun to join in with them. We lost two games and then won the third, although how well we were doing wasn't clear to me until everyone started to switch sides on the net.
That done we returned to work, where I set up my computer for more testing and use of the programs I'm to maintain and improve. Before I got to work, however, I saw my wife's comment in gmail to my last entry, and so knew she was awake. I called her up and we talked a bit before I let her return to packing, but it was nice to hear her voice.
That evening I decided to go back downtown and look around some more. One gentleman who teaches English to the programmers here sketched me a rough map of where I needed to get off of the tram, and I was hoping my trip would be more interesting than the last. At the last moment Eric decided to come with me, and we headed down to the tram. Arriving in the middle of a grand square (Place de la Comedie) overlooked by an old Opera house, we looked about - there was a two-level old-style carousel set up there (which Eric got a shot of) and then we walked about. There weren't a lot of French restaurants there, but there was a Subway (always a fallback), an Italian restaurant that looked interesting, and several 'Star Kabob' restaurants. I also found a Sushi restaurant, but Eric's not interested in that.
Walking around a bit, we again bemoaned the fact that all the stores close so early - 7pm and they shut down, making it difficult to shop when you get off work maybe as early as 6:30. However, the Virgin Megastore turned out to be open late, so we went browsing inside. Up front they had a display of small, inexpensive French-English, French-Italian, and French-German dictionaries, and I picked one up for myself. After that we looked about, although all of the books were in French. I did note the large display of 'Tintin' graphic novels, as well as a spread of 'Transmetropolitan' GNs. Other hardback books were full of comics as well, although the only one I could follow was a collection of blond jokes illustrated - and that because I could often recognize the joke.
However, I left that behind and left the store with my new dictionary, along with a small gift I picked up on impulse for a friend. That done we wandered back down to the square, where the carosel had shut down as well. We then headed down to the Italian restaurant, a cozy little place with red tablecloths sporting suns and moons. I think the first waitress was a little put off by our lack of French, and let the other one handle us - we were able to figure out what things were, mostly, but piercing bits together and then pointing to meals in the menu. We eventually ended up (by chance) getting the same thing - first a small salad with a bit of 'salmon salad', compressed into a block, followed by a very good piece of steak along with noodles with two different sauces. Very good, and reasonable portion sizes instead of the hugeness that America seems trapped in.
Before we ate, however, we stopped at MonoPrix. Although at first we thought it was a woman's clothing store, it turned out to be more of a general store - like Target, or Wal mart, with a small grocery attached. I went through the grocery to pick up a few items to snack on, and was proud of being able to go through it all without being (I thought) too obviously American. It helped that the amount was displayed instead of said out loud.
We returned to the square, where the tram was, just in time for the tram to leave without us. Looking at the display, we saw that the next tram wasn't for 11 minutes. Since Eric fancied some coffee, we returned to a small coffee store we'd passed. We originally thought it had closed, but we just didn't understand that you needed to push into the restuarant - we're used to american doors that always push out. Once that was worked out he had a cappuccino, and I had what was labeled a 'Toffee Coffee'. We agreed it was some of the best we'd had in a long time as we walked back to the tram stop with three minutes to go.
Returning home I played around with my computer, missing my precious internet, until it was time to sleep. I turned in early, actually, but then woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep, so I watched some stuff on my hard drive before returning to bed.
And tonight I get to see my wife again! She's flying out to visit me in Paris - I have train tickets and everything. I can't wait.
