europe trip, nov 2004

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who would've thought a trip to europe in november would be so fantastic?!?! despite some crappy weather, though, it was just that. and of course, leave it to me to put off blogging about my trip until 2 weeks later, but let's just say work has been keeping me plenty busy.

i primarily went over for an ARINC security working group meeting in toulouse, france, but then decided to stay a few extra days and travel to amsterdam. we (tim and steve from united also went on the trip) flew to frankfurt (FRA) and then hopped a lufthansa flight to toulouse (TLS) for the meeting. then it was back to frankfurt to meet up with elena and take the ICE train to amsterdam (AMS). all in all, we were gone for 9 days and visited 3 countries -- not too damn shabby. so here's the lowdown:

the flight over
on our flight to FRA, tim, steve, and i all got upgraded to 1st class, which on a united 777 is quite a kickass experience. needless to say, i took all possible advantage of the comfort and got my sleep on. mucho thanks to laura for having her birthday party @ sugar the night before, made the morning fantastic. :) of course, i still made time to watch anchor man and snack on "crab- and nut-crusted mahi mahi," but can you blame me? i honestly was a bit sad to land in frankfurt, but it was time to get down to business. unfortunately for tim and me, we wound up getting stuck at the frankfurt airport all day, since the flights to TLS were overbooked, and even w/ our business passes there wasn't room... and just to add to the fun, when we tried to get our bags (we'd checked the rollies so we didn't have to deal with them all day) we were told they had been set aside for the first flight in the morning. great. at least we had toiletries w/ us, and were ok for the night.

toulouse
eventually (the next morning) we got to TLS and our meeting. first of all, toulouse and the surrounding towns like blagnac are pretty cool and provided a lot of photo ops... toulouse is the home of airbus, who was hosting the meeting, and of course we found some time to explore. on tuesday night tim, steve, and i went for a long walk down to blagnac's city center, which is just outside of toulouse. blagnac has a great church and some cute shops, not to mention some bars. :) thursday night the airbus guys setup a dinner at cafe VG in downtown toulouse, and tim and i took the liberty of walking around for a few hours first. we caught the view of pont saint-michel from the pont neuf (toulouse's version, not the paris one) and lugging the tripod around the city paid off in the form of various city shots... all too soon, though, it was time to leave toulouse and head back to germany.

ICE train
elena flew over to frankfurt and met us for a train ride up to amsterdam -- the first time i'd ridden a "real" train in europe. it was amazing to see the countryside fly by, especially as we went in and out of snow, sun, and rain... there were some we wound up grabbing a few beers in the dining/bar car, and rocked out to the ipod -- much better than hopping on another plane.

amsterdam
ever been to amsterdam? if not, you should go. and if you've already been, go again, cause amsterdam freakin' rocks and you know it. the city is beautiful, even in the rain -- it's just got that old-world european thing down pat. and there's soooooo something to be said about walking around in a city that looks the same as it did hundreds of years ago... from central station to the dam to the canals to nieumarkt and of course the red light district, amsterdam is full of culture. we did some shopping, too, mainly for t-shirts and other little souvenirs, but certainly not that kind of shopping. :P

the only problem we had was the weather, pretty cold and rainy for all 3 days we were there. made it tough to get night shots since i didn't want to carry the tripod around all day in the rain. (too bad, though, since they would've been great with the wet brick...) of course, right when we were leaving on tuesday morning the sun came out finally... i'm really looking forward to heading back either in the spring or summer. who all wants to come with me?