Work day in Paris

Today was a work day as will be every day this week. This is the reason I have come to Paris and it was a very interesting day. We spent the day at the Eurosatory Exhibition. This is an exhibition for Military suppliers of all types from all over the world. Anything from munitions, small arms, optics, hydration systems, tires, wheels, clothing....the list could go on for pages! Again, since this blog is not about my work, but about the personal side of life, I'll tell you about some of the interesting things I did today.

One interesting thing was to take a shower. You didn't expect that did you? The hotel we are staying in is called Hotel Muguet. It really is a nice place, but it is very different from what you find in the US. In the US the rooms are actually pretty big with large bathrooms and space enough to spread your stuff out. Here in Paris it is considerably different.

The room has a full size bed. I don't know of anyone who has less than a queen size bed unless they have children (and a single bed) and I'd be willing to bet that even some of their kids have queen size beds. So, the bed is comfortable enough. However, I'm 5'5" and I wonder how comfortable this bed would be for someone who is more than a couple of inches taller than me.

The bed pretty much takes up the entire room. There is room to maneuver on either side of it and there is a desk at the foot of it. But, there really isn't a lot of room that is not bed. If I am sitting at the desk and I get out of the chair on one side, but need to go to the other side of the chair, I need to push the chair in. It is small!

So, you can see it. Pretty cozy, but hey, the most i'm doing in this room is sleeping and jumping online now and then. Most of my time is intended to be spent either working or seeing stuff outside the hotel.

So, why did I say it was interesting to take a shower? Because the bathroom is small and the shower stall is even smaller! It is interesting just to reach down to wash my feet and lower legs because the space is so limited. Here's a couple of photos of the water closet. .

You can see that the bathroom and the room is really nice (it is!) but it is so different from what you become accustomed to in the USA.

Once Paul and I got back to the Hotel in the afternoon, we found his wife Jenn downloading the images she took. She spent the day at the Louvre. As we sat there, this dog was wandering around. Friendly little guy! Apparantly she belongs to one of the hotel staff.

Another interesting thing I did was to use both the Metro and the RER (regional train service). These are trains like you would think of a train - NOT a metro or subway or whatever. The metro (subway) gets pretty packed, but that train was horribly packed at times. Pretty fun way to get around the city for a guy making a visit, but I' could not deal with that every day!

That's the update for today. Now it is time for a beer!