Day 03 - Paris

I’ve got a hard and long marketing meeting slated for noon today and wanting to double the fun, I decided not to prepare for it (at all). Not that I could if I wanted to, considering the amount of alcohol I have ingested yesterday…

The whole team arrived at the show just after 10am and things look to be heating up at the booth. I see a lot more Asians than the last show in Munich and this is good cos it gives me something to do when I am NOT:

1) having a coffee
2) having a pretzel
3) having chips
4) having a beer, or three
5) having champagne
6) in the toilet
7) check out our competitors’ booths

The thing with these Europe-based shows are that there will be food & drinks available at every booth you see. Some even have a full-blown café within (like in our case). On an average day, I consume around 5-6 espressos + 2-3 beers + 3 pretzels + misc. chips + misc. biscuits + champagne (sometimes). And of cos, do that that this excludes our diet before and after the show.

The meeting went ok… I guess they had more important things to dicuss than my inability to produce a highly entertaining powerpoint ppt. The agenda was tough, stiff deadlines were made, tons of coffee consumed and budgets cuts discussed. Overall still pleasant, considering the differences in opinion between the various region (basically, UK against the rest of the world).

For my valiant effort today, I was promised a nice ghoul-style dinner (think Asterix & Obelix)… and boy, did it blow my mind off… As we entered the restaurant, I see a mini butcher shop and 2 large barrels dripping a rich, burgundy-coloured liquid (what might this vile thing be?) and it extends deep into the back, with spiral stairs running down from the side.
We were given a table in the basement cavern (yes, a real cavern protected by local regulations against modifications and renovations) and on the long bench-style table… huge baskets of fresh legumes which the Brits lapped up with relish. Wtf? This gives new meaning to a salad buffet, yah?

And as we start dinner, I am told the barrels upstairs contain wine (really?) and the butcher shop is pretty much free for all.

For EUR50 per pax, we get:

1) All the legumes you can eat
2) All the bread you can eat
3) All the sausages, pate and cured meats you can eat
4) A serving from the grill
5) A bloody huge tray of mixed cheese – I recognized port salut, camembert, rye, and blue
6) Dessert – Iced lemon, crème caramel or chocolate crème

The iced lemon deserves special mention for the fact that it is essentially a large, fist-sized lemon stuffed with lemon ice-cream and frozen. Solid shit this is! I had to eat this (Carla’s) after my own crème caramel and Mike begged me to spare him some. And almost mandatory, we washed it all down with lotsa wine (almost 10 – 12 75cl jugs between the 10 of us) and esppreso. Sublime…
We capped the day with a walk to the Champ Elysees and Eiffel Tower before crashing out back in our rooms.

Day 02 - Paris

I spent the whole day at the tradeshow , nothing much there but the Asian visitors kept me busy for most parts. Ahhh…. Looking forward to dinner already.

Dinner this time round was at a pre-rennaissance style restaurant just round the corner from our hotel. I had:

1) Fish & shellfish bisque
2) Stuffed suckling pig with mash & a red wine reduction
3) Glaces (ice-cream) in Valrhona grand cru chocolate, nougatine and vanilla
4) A 2001 Paul Jaboulet from the Rhone Valley – sucks!

The British team joined us half-way thru dinner and things took a nice turn… we started having beer! Woohoo!!! And to top that, we adjoined to an irish bar (perhaps the only one in Paris) after dinner till late. Real late…

Notre Dame

Misc. around Paris

Spotted along the Champs Elysees

Luxembourg Gardens

Paris...

Paris

Arrived at Charles de Gaulle International around 7am… the metro ride to Luxembourg, where my hotel is, was rather painless… this is probably more than I can say for the other national rail systems around Europe.

Ok, first hitch – my hotel is 100m from the station, in which direction? I probably asked 4 or 5 english-allergic blokes along the way before I hit jackpot. Thing is, I was barely 20 steps from the hotel lobby by then.

My room will only be ready by 2pm and that leaves me with plenty of time to roam around inner city Paris. Perfect.

Hopping into the next decent looking café I could find, over a nice breakfast of bacon over running eggs + a long black, I planned my route, which takes to me to most of the must-sees within reasonable walking distance. Notre Dame > Louvre > Obelisk > Champs Elysees > Ard de Triomph > Eiffel Tower seems like a nice little loop. Except I overlooked the fact that I was lugging my laptop, camera & misc. chargers within this 9kg anchor of a bag. Nice!

First thing that struck me – Paris is such a picturesque place… everything seems so snap-worthy. By the time I was done with my “walk”, I had taken more than 300 pictures. I won’t blab about these tourist spots much, you can probably find more info on the Net and I’m sure my pictures will tell the story better – will post ‘em soon.

My first dinner in Paris was good… bloody good. This being Paris, I will talk about food a little more than I usually will. It was a dinner hosted by our logistics supplier and we had some great seafood a la parisien. I shared a platter with Joachim and if you are thinking mussels+calamari+fish & shrimps (a la fish&co.) – think again. On this huge silver platter 2 feet across and lined with crushed ice, I saw oysters (24!), lobster claws (1 huge boston), halved crabs, shrimp, raw scallops, 3-4 kinds of exotic-looking shellfish, fermented shrimp-lets and snails. Suffice to say that, accompanied with a generous flow of chablis and champagne, it was a brilliant night.

What a lame blog...

This slot on blogosphere was up since 6 mths ago… but everytime I try to slap together a few words for it, I’m stumped. Well, every netizen worth his or her salt has a blog, even those on permanent hiatus. I’ll try to make my life more interesting for the sole purpose of blogging it. Yes, I will. Here goes…