Boarding is done, so I am now comfortably ensconced in seat 4-B of DL flight 144, a Boeing 777 headed from Atlanta to the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. The flight should take about 8.5 hours, after which I'll have a couple of hours in Paris to clear French customs, find my flight to Nice, and have a baguette or something.

I purposefully chose this flight so I could get to Nice at a reasonable hour. Delta has a direct flight from JFK to Nice, but I've never liked JFK: it's crowded, dirty, and noisy, and security there has been, shall we say, less than stellar. Accordingly, I fly out via Atlanta and back via Cincinnati. The Atlanta airport is not what I would call a pleasant place; there's nothing particularly wrong with it, but it's not a place one looks forward to visiting. Concourse E (the international terminal) is pretty nice, though; it's the cleanest and least crowded of the terminals, and their food court has a Popeye's-- a critical factor when choosing where to eat pre-boarding.

I like my Smartphone quite well, and I miss having the address book, calendar, et al right there in the phone. However, it won't work in Europe, which uses the GSM mobile phone standard. I used to have a GSM phone (and Arlene still does), but I dropped it in order to get an integrated Palm Pilot/phone device.  I just figured out how to use my rented Motorola GSM phone to make a wireless connection to my laptop. Or, at least, I figured out how it's supposed to work. Too bad the manual is in my suitcase beneath the airplane, or I'd post this update now. As it is, instead I will lament that Handspring's Treo isn't out yet, since it is both a world phone and a Palm device.

One last note: one of my favorite things about Delta's BizElite service is something simple that most other US carriers have: power ports! I can plug in my laptop and power it, no matter how long the flight is. American and United have these ports on most of their aircraft-- American even has them in coach. I like flying Delta, though, for two reasons: they have the best schedule out of Huntsville, and the average quality of their ground staff and cabin crew is very, very good. All airlines (heck, all organizations) have their good and bad employees, but Delta's bad ones are less prevalent than, say, Northwest's.

Right now we're about 2800 miles from Paris, so I have time to get in a good solid nap. One final note: for some reason, Office XP persists in switching the keyboard into the French layout. No kidding. It does this on at least three of my machines; at unpredictable intervals, all the keys are remapped to the position they'd have on a real French keyboard. For example, whenever I press the key clearly labeled "Q" on my keyboard, Office gives me an A, and so on. This wouldn't be so bad if I knew how to type with a French keyboard (I don't) or if I knew how to switch back to the standard US keyboard (I don't). Quitting and relaunching the offending application always fixes it, though, oddly enough.

Originally, my connection only allowed 50 minutes between landing in Paris and leaving to Nice. I figured this wouldn't be enough time to clear customs, so I rebooked to a later flight. This turned out to be a bad idea for two reasons: a) 50 minutes would have been plenty of time and b) my later flight was delayed another 90 minutes past its original departure time.

Fortunately, though, this change allowed me enough time to retrieve the wallet I'd left aboard my Atlanta-Paris flight. It was uncomfortable to sleep on, so I removed it and tucked it into the niche in the armrest, where I promptly forgot about it. Note to self: don't do that again. I had my passport, so I was able to clear customs, but if I had gotten on my Nice flight without it...ooh la la.

There's a happy ending: even though the Air France counter staff were clueless, a sharp monsieur at the Delta counter contacted the gate, located the missing wallet, and got it back to me posthaste. That left me time to walk around the airport, people-watching and buying a few souvenirs.

I also found the Air France lounge. Many US-based frequent flyers complain that AF won't let them into their lounges, even though under the terms of the DL-AF alliance they're supposed to. Trust me, guys: you're not missing anything, except perhaps the showers. The AF staff were friendly enough, and we were generally able to communicate using my rusty French. That's how I learned that the flight was delayed, and that malheureusement it would be impossible to reroute my luggage from my delayed flight to one that left on time.

As for the Air France domestic flight: I'd rather take Southwest. First, it was on an Airbus A320; I dislike Airbus equipment in general because a) it isn't made by Boeing and b) its safety record is not all that stellar. In fairness, it should be noted that many of the Airbus accidents have been due to poor maintenance and poor flight-crew training and coordination. Second, the seat quality, even in their so-called business class, is abysmal: too narrow, too close together, and sacre bleu! hard as a rock! It was a short flight, though, and soon enough I was at the Nice airport.

Thanks to Kemwel, a US rental car broker, I had reserved a four-door car. It turned out to be a Citroen Xantia; mine is light blue, has no radio, and comes with a diesel engine. It's actually rather fun to drive, and I'm happy to report that I can still drive a stick shift perfectly well despite years being out of the habit.

She directed us to Antibes, to a place called Le Brulot, a supposedly authentic Provencal restaurant. Rarely have I had a better meal! For 115FFr (or just under $20), I had a multi-course meal. I started with a large bowl of fish soup made with a heavy brown roux-- just like a gumbo, without the rice. Hmmm, perhaps that's a future innovation to suggest for my next visit. That was followed by a sort of macaroni-and-cheese/lasagna casserole made with long, thin pasta, plus lots of bread. It took us almost 3 hours just to eat; the restaurant was wonderfully crowded with people, and the service was unhurried, but in a good way.

Our car park fronted a marina in Antibes, where we saw some huge yachts-- 75' and up, helipads, the whole nine yards. Some were occupied, some weren't; we didn't see anyone famous. At the restaurant, we were shoehorned into a 4-place table along with two middle-aged Frenchwomen who smoked approximately half a pack of cigarettes each while we ate-- quite charming. They did not condescend to speak to the stupid Americans.

Depending on how long our work at the lab takes today, our tentative plan for the evening is to make the short drive to Monaco and investigate Monte Carlo. I didn't sleep well last night (a consequence of getting to bed so late from dinner), so I don't know how that will go.

A word about our hotel: quite nice. It has wireless Internet in the lobby and restaurant area, which is certainly nice. There's a large golf course, a pair of pools, and some other outdoor amenities that we won't get to use, but all of the in-room fixtures work properly and everything is clean. No caffeine-free diet Coke, though. Off to breakfast!

I forgot to mention that I bumped into a group of US missionaries at French customs, right about the time I was forgetting to ask to have my passport stamped. They were all headed to Hamburg, and were mightily excited about their upcoming missionary work. It always gives me a lift to see these young men and women, who are voluntarily giving up two years of their lives, out doing what they do from the sheer love of it.

We got to see a bit of the countryside on our way to the restaurant, which is about 10km from our hotel. Since it was dark, of course, most of what we saw was trees on the side of the road. However, we did travel through some subdivision-like areas that looked to have nice views.

Tomorrow Brian heads back to Denver (Nice-Frankfurt-Denver), while Pierre and I meet with an engineer from our local office to try to get two other products installed and running. Now I'm going to bed, in the hope that I'll sleep more soundly than I did last night.

Would that I had such luck with the hotel's wireless system. It works fine for ordinary Internet access, but it can't accommodate encrypted VPN connections. VERITAS requires that we use encryption, and I'm sure not going to turn it off for VPNing to my home network. Thus I am forced to go to my room, dial up through Earthlink, and VPN in to get my work mail; I can use Outlook Web Access to get my robichaux.net mail. 

This has probably been the most embarrassment-laden trip I've ever had. First there was the wallet incident. Then, as Brian and I were driving around Wednesday night, we went down a dead-end street and had to back into a parking garage. While trying to extricate the car, I scraped the paint (I'll post a photo when I get home). Fortunately, that's why I paid for the collision insurance when I rented it. If you've never been to Europe, it's difficult to understand just how narrow streets and parking spaces are; if you have, then you probably are nodding in sympathy (and if not, you should be; I was quite traumatized). To top things off, on Thursday I managed to lose the stylus of my wife's Visor by dropping it into a toilet. I was barely able to catch the Visor as it fell out of my shirt pocket, but the stylus was a goner.

Today's episode: I was in a shop in downtown Nice, shopping for some holiday gifts. There were two middle-aged women working there. I was speaking with one, and we were doing just fine. The second woman walked by and said something sotto voce to my helper. I couldn't hear what she said. However, the first woman quickly told her compatriot to be quiet, because I spoke French and I could understand her. Stupid Americans 1, French 0.

Apart from that (and the fact that one place I really wanted to visit closed an hour early because it was Friday), my downtown experience was quite pleasant. There's a great map site that I used to pinpoint some of the places I wanted to go; the map on the right shows where one store I was looking for was located.

I didn't have any trouble getting around, because all the streets in the downtown area were clearly marked. That's not true of Promenade des Anglaises and Quai des États-Unis, which you can see running east-west just above the water on the map above. The trick is to get off that main drag and go a little north, into the area close to City Hall and the local Palais de Justice. (I like that name so much I may start using it to refer to the Limestone County courthouse.) Once I found a place to park, I was set to do some serious wandering around.

Of course, I didn't know ahead of time where I was going, for the most part. I had dinner at a nice little restaurant called L'Embarcadere (The Wharf), where I had some grilled fish and bread. The waiter sat a Frenchman next to me; we had a pleasant conversation, with him speaking English and me speaking French. He repeatedly insisted that I try some wine, but I was able to successfully turn him down, hopefully without insulting him. He just didn't seem to grasp the concept that one can visit France and not drink wine. Stupid Americans 2, French 0.

Anyway, once I'd finished exploring downtown, I got back on the A8 and headed toward the hotel. I had previously noticed a Carrefour near the tollbooth at the Antibes exit, so I decided to stop there and pick up a few things. I'm glad I did; it was a fascinating visit. The French invented the concept of the hypermarket, and they certainly seem to have perfected it. Think of the biggest Super WalMart or Super K-Mart you've ever been to, then smash it together with a Home Depot and a Circuit City and you've got the general idea. I was able to use an ATM to withdraw some francs, then I got down to it. I bought some books for the boys' school French teacher, two Playmobil toys (one for David and one for Thomas), some Ziploc bags (well, not really; they're Carrefour brand) for packing potentially leaky stuff on the way home, a soft musical soccer ball for Matthew, some small bags of candy, and lots of other stuff. If I'd been so inclined, I could have bought a bunch of French DVDs, a lawn mower, some fresh fish, a pair of boots, deodorant, dog food, a satellite receiver, horse meat, and some gift-wrapping from the Scouts of France. Unfortunately, all that stuff won't fit under my seat (although I did have to get a bag to carry back some of the things that I don't trust the airlines not to break).

My flight out leaves at 0640 Nice time, which is just before midnight in Alabama. Arlene's going to call my cell phone about 0445 so I'll have a wakeup call; my goal is to stay mostly awake until then so I can get a solid sleep during normal business hours on the plane. Of course, I probably won't be able to sleep on Air France's junker, but I'm going to give it a shot. Time to go see what's on French TV.

This morning I woke up at 0430 Nice time, after about 2 hours of sleep. It was difficult to get up, but I had programmed the TV's built-in clock to wake me up. I learned that it does so by turning on the TV to channel 1 (France-1) at maximum volume, which is pretty darn loud when you're sound asleep. A quick shower, then I got dressed and ate the Clementine I bought at the customer's cafeteria yesterday. The front desk had come through on their promise to have a taxi for me at 0500, so I got to the airport quickly and easily. Warning: taxi fares in Nice are extremely high. I paid 338FFr, or about $50, for a 15-mile cab ride. Good thing I got a receipt!

When I got to the Nice airport, I quickly checked in; the Air France people were polite and efficient, belying the horror stories I had been hearing on FlyerTalk. The boarding area is quite spare; it's open and spacious, and I bet it's something to behold when it's actually light outside. The Air France lounge there provided me with a couple of soft rolls, cheese, and apple juice for breakfast-- when they finally opened, that is. I even managed to sleep some on the flight to Paris, although the purser work me up to ask if I wanted breakfast.

My return trip to CDG was maddening. First we had to wait almost 15 minutes to get a stair truck, because our jetway was broken. After that, I took a bus from terminal 2F to 2C, where I quickly got stuck in a security line behind a very large group of people whose primary language was neither English nor French. The metal detectors were beeping for almost every person, since most of these folks didn't bother to empty their pockets.

Once I got through security (with a polite but thorough questioning about the contents of my two carry-ons), I quickly found the AF lounge near my departure gate. It was moderately crowded, mostly with Americans. I enjoyed watching one fellow do battle with the France Telecom pay phone and his laptop. He lost. When it was my turn to use the phone, I found it wasn't as easy as I'd assumed-- the French phone system is not for sissies or people who can't read French. AF called boarding of our flight more than an hour ahead of time, which I thought was odd; however, the reason is that the Delta gate personnel totally abandoned the usual practice of boarding by row or section. Instead, we had a big mob of ~ 250 people assembled at the gate, being screened ("Do you have any weapons in your bag? When did you pack your luggage?") before getting their boarding cards scanned. Then we got on buses that took us about 2 miles to our aircraft, where the mob stretched into a single-file line for boarding. Odd that Air France could do it right in Nice and that vaunted Delta couldn't at one of their major hubs. Most of the passengers took these gyrations with good humor, though, so no major damage was done.

As I fly home, a few random observations:

• The upcoming transition to the Euro (that's € for all you reading along at home) seems to be going pretty well. Most of the restaurants and shops I visited had prices listed as euros and francs; a few had euros only. Each time I used a credit card, I was asked whether I wanted the purchase denominated in francs or euros. The French seem to have accepted the transition with a pragmatic attitude, although I suspect there was a lot of grumbling that has died down now that it's a fait accompli. However, I couldn't get euros at any of the currency exchange shops. Guess I'll have to wait until after 1 January.
• The US airlines are nickel-and-diming passengers and hoping we won't complain or reduce our flying. In doing so, they are being needlessly shortsighted and penny-wise/pound-foolish. Case in point: Delta recently announced that they were doing away with movies on flights shorter than 1,750 miles. That means, for example, that Atlanta-Las Vegas or Salt Lake City-Atlanta passengers go movieless. Don't get me wrong; airline movies are usually second-tier films, projected on fuzzy, dim little screens. However, I can't imagine that eliminating them saves them any meaningful amount of money, and it certainly does make the overall travel experience less pleasant. Don't even get me started with the cuts in inflight food and beverage service! If I wanted no-frills service, I'd fly Southwest; when I fly a full-service carrier, I expect a reasonable level of amenities. What's next: a $5 charge for a pillow and blanket? Maybe they'll start printing ads on the pillowcases. No, wait, I know: every passenger will be expected to show up with 10 gallons of Jet-A fuel. One thing is sure: the major airlines will all gleefully join in a race to the bottom, exactly like lemmings pouring off the edge of a cliff.
• At Carrefour, I saw a typically elegant French solution to an everyday problem: shopping cart theft. Each cart's handle has a little steel box with a short chain attached to it. These chains are used to hook the baskets together. When you put a 10FFr coin in the box, it releases the chain of the next basket in line so you can get yours loose. If you want your 10FFr back, you have to attach the basket back to another one. Simple and easy. Of course, we can't do that in the states because dollar coins aren't widespread enough yet.
• Brian and I both noticed the relative lack of junk food. Sure, there were a few bags of chips at the convenience store, and candy is everywhere, but France doesn't seem to have the relentless tide of nutritionally void utter crap that we do. I saw several TV ads for yogurt and candy, but none for soda, potato chips, Twinkies, and so on. I don't know if this is because the government broadcasters won't show them or if they're just not advertised.
• Walking down the street in France is an education in personal deportment. It was extremely rare that I saw anyone whose personal appearance was slovenly or careless. This is not to say that everyone looked like they'd come out of Vogue, but I didn't see the kind of slouching, sloppy-looking, threw-on-some-sweatpants-and-Birkenstocks look that I'm used to seeing in public spaces in the US-- not even at Carrefour, which is arguably the place I'd have most expected it. If the average WalMart shopper from Athens (or the average person in Perrysburg or Houston, for that matter) were teleported to la Place de la Justice in Nice, they'd get an eye-opening short course in everyday fashion and bearing. Even the people who work in the fish market had a carriage and comportment that made them look, well, continental. This says nothing of the fact that the French abhor the idea of obesity and that their physical infrastructure lends itself to lots of healthy walking and biking. All the cigarettes they smoke probably help keep 'em slim, too.
• The French are carelessly bilingual. Many public places had bilingual English/French signs, but often the English translation was more of a transliteration, done by someone with a limited command of English. Most of the errors are minor-- missing articles, improper subject-verb agreement, and so on. Still, though, considering the care with which the French treat their own language, one would think they could do a better job with ours.
• The Charles de Gaulle airport gives you a sense of being at a real, honest-to-goodness working airport. This is probably because of the bus rides, which take you along the flight line, past all of the ground support equipment, and along the side of the terminal, where the baggage sorting areas are clearly visible. The airport workers all wear fluorescent yellow vests, too, which makes them stand out so that they appear to be everywhere all at once.
• I remember that during my 1984 visit there was a controversy about anti-Semitic remarks made by some government minister or other. Surprisingly, a parallel controversy is still going on; each day this week, I saw articles in Le Monde and Le Figaro examining different aspects of anti-Semitism in France. There's a popular book called "Do the Jews Have a Future?", but I didn't get time to look over it to see whether it's connected with the current contretemps.
• The French will strike to get what they want, witness the air traffic controllers' strike. The national police are about to strike, an action which is expressly prohibited by French law, and last night the TF1 news reported that the doctors' union is planning a strike for sometime next year. The bankers' union has already planned a strike for 2 January, but I don't know what they're holding out for. In many cases, these strikes are arbitrary and even greedy-- dockworkers struck earlier this year to get the 35-hour work week starting now instead of in January-- but they have produced valuable fruit for French workers, including the shortened work week and the 5 weeks of paid vacation that every French worker is guaranteed by law.