Monday, September 20, 2010

Europe, Part 1

Almost immediately after finishing the Addison race, I headed out for a business trip to Europe. My knee ended up getting pretty sore and stiff on the plane, but it improved as the week went on.

First stop was Ketsch, Germany. Basically not too much around there, but the hotel was nice and everything went pretty smoothly.

From Ketsch, we took a high-speed train to Paris. I'd been on a high-speed train once before in Japan, but that time, we were in an artificial "canyon" the whole time, so it was really hard to get a sense of the speed. On this train, we were more out in the open, so you got a better sense of how fast it was. Anyway, it was pretty cool.

Apparently, there was a big fashion expo in Paris the night I was there, so hotels were hard to come by. The one we stayed at wasn't so nice... the bed was on the floor (no box spring, bed frame, etc). There was no chair, just a stool. Cleanliness of the carpet was a little suspect. As it turned out, the biggest annoyance was a running toilet. It refilled loudly about every 2 minutes. I ended up sleeping with earplugs in.

I didn't get a chance to spend much time in Paris... that's how business trips go. But I did at least get to see the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, even if only from the car. That made it better than the last time I was in Paris...

Last stop was Monaco (yes, my company has a plant in Monaco). The weather wasn't so great while I was there, but Monaco was otherwise pretty nice. It's a different world there. The yachts were bigger than I expected... some were easily bigger than my house. I also saw lots of nice cars... Ferrari's, Lamborghini's, you name it... I didn't get to spend much time there either before heading home.

The flight home was a little tense. My flight out of Nice was delayed and I ended up having to run through the Frankfurt airport to catch my flight home.

So, one week, no exercise (except the aforementioned airport jog), and the 2nd Waterford Hills cyclocross race the next day. Sounds good...

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