France o France

my latest travel was to france, about 3 weeks back..we went to toulouse and marseille, and got a heavy wiff of snow at paris for flight into and out of france..

toulouse is an aerospace city; most of the people here works for airbus and there are many many other aerospace companies are here as well, to support this huge industry. i arrived about 1/2 a day before my CEO did, and i had a great time walking around, hopping in and off the metro (like any european cities, the system is fantastic) i managed to shop few handbags, no magnets were found here, since its not exactly a tourist centre. went to the pont neuf (landmark of toulouse - try google toulouse, and this would be the first thing you see on screen), capitole, canal du midi, st sernin cathedral and found by accident, the galleria lafayette (i like...)

foodwise; not at all a problem, being french, they love cheese so much, i can find cheese pizza, cheese tarts, cheese croissant in every cafes. i naturally love all the bakes in france, so i enjoyed quite a variety of the breads as well. carrefour nearby even has a halal section, so no issues with missing chicken and beef or getting over-whelmed with fish :) and what is france, of course, without chocolates.. i bought almost 20 chocolates and few cheeses to bring back home, and even the french approves of this being the best souvenir coming from france.

then he came, and work was non-stop. journey down south was great, however. we went to marseille for a meeting, but olyn being olyn, i made sure i enjoyed every bit of that as well. it was a 4hours drive down, and we saw beautiful landscape all the way; windmill, browned fileds, snowy patches, old houses and cathedrals, vineyards...all so gorgeous. first view of marseille at the customer's site; hmm...why did he say this was a gorgeous city again?? then when meeting was over, he decided we had plenty of time before night-fall at 5.30pm, so we headed towards sea.

marseille is absolutely breath-taking. its a port city, very old and it managed to retain most of its original beauty. we managed to hop onto the city tour tram, which you can take near the dock. the tour was the heart of the whole experience. we saw the mouth-dropping sunset from the sea side, we went uphill to the famous marseille cathedral or the Cathédrale Sainte-Marie-Majeure. up here, you can see the whole of marseille. reminded me of barcelona, without the sagrada familia in the distance. such a densed city with very well maintained old architecture.

after nightfall, his wife decided she wanted to put a footprint into spain. being a good hubby, and an obidient employee (yours truly) we convened, and headed further south into spain, into girona (the nearest city to france) that took another 4 hours. we had supper there of this weird looking but yummy tuna pizza and black squid paella (of course) then headed back home to toulouse, to arrive at 2am. france being france, all shops are closed, even the petrol stations. fuel was enough, but got us into trouble with returning the rented car, since we breached the contracts of returning the car with a full tank, therefore they charged us max..huhu..

all in all, this was yet another fun trip, with of course a not-so-fun side of it (80% of it, since its work work work) but i dont mind at all, coz i got to travel :)