La Fête du Travail and other great things about May in France...

Hello! First, I apologize that -- again -- it's been difficult for me lately to get around to posting some news/photos/&c. here. But here we are... Since the last post (where I believe I talked about our trip to Montpellier -- but I only 'believe' because I can't remember for sure and I'm too lazy to look. Actually, I don't know if 'lazy' is the correct word because I know that it would have been less work to go check than to write out this whole parenthetical explanation, but there you go...) things have continued to be going well. Two weeks after Montpellier we spent another long weekend in Avignon. I had a paper at the Workshop on Semantic Analysis in Social Media at the European Association of Computational Linguistics conference (or SASM/EACL, if you prefer). The workshop was Monday the 23rd of April so we went to Avignon on the Saturday morning and had a nice time over the weekend and then stayed for my conference. During that day Sandi got to do some more 'touristy' stuff and I presented my paper which went well. Avignon is quite a beautiful city (as it seems most French cities are) and we of course saw the famous Pont d'Avignon and the Palais des Papes. We again rented bikes to go around the city and we spent most of my April salary at an amazing restaurant called 'Les 5 Sens'. Absolutely incredible. Here are some pictures to back up my alleged stories...

Me drinking a coffee and eating a moelleux au chocolat

Me eating sushi just before taking the train home

Sandi in the sun just outside of the 'city centre' (completely surrounded by walls)

@ Les 5 Sens: Sandi with her appetizer

@ Les 5 Sens: Me with my appetizer (and wine)

My appetizer up close (smoked salmon with other delicious stuff)

Sandi's appetizer up close (stuffed [STUFFED!] mussels with other deliciousness)

@ Les 5 Sens: With our main courses

My main course (magret with other assorted delicious stuff)

Sandi's main course (some kind of casserole type thing with various meats, etc.)

One of our desserts (café gourmand)

Sandi @ O'Neill's Irish Pub (with Kilkennys)

Having lunch in front of the Pont d'Avignon

Le Palais des Papes

Biking on another pont in front of the pont d'Avignon

Dinner at a pizzeria on the island in the river

Sandi at same pizzeria with red highlights

Me just before my conference (looking very much like a conference-goer)

So there you go. But where was I? Let's see... In Avignon we also went to an Irish pub but this is in fact quite a French thing to do because there are several of them here in Grenoble and also quite a few that we saw in Avignon and they are generally quite packed.

Anyways, Avignon was really nice and at the end before we took the train home we had sushi at the Sushi Shop which is like a chain restaurant in France but it was actually quite good (for French sushi which generally isn't THAT amazing and is normally way more expensive than it should be and WAY more expensive than sushi is in Canada).

The weekend after Avignon -- which was last weekend -- was almost like a long weekend here but not quite. This past Tuesday was a holiday (la Fête du Travail) so a lot of people took the Monday off to make it a 4-day weekend. I didn't but it was fine because hardly anyone was at work on Monday and then Tuesday was off and it really felt like a Sunday so today felt like a Monday but somehow tomorrow is already Thursday! Great! AND, if that wasn't good enough, NEXT Tuesday is the exact same thing because it will be la Fête de la Victoire (end of world war 2). FURTHER, the week after Thursday will be a holiday because it's Ascension (40 days after Easter, I believe) but this time Xerox will close down for the Friday so EVERYONE gets a 4-day weekend at that point. So it's a great month here in France.

Now about the last weekend.. We did our first race in France and it was a good one. We ran in a 10 k race put on by the running club in Meylan (the city where I work just outside of Grenoble). It was a really good race that was put on really well and we got t-shirts and the organization was great and it was only 5 euros each!!! Most importantly of all, however, Sandi got 3rd place female so she won a bunch of stuff including a ski pass and some hand cream products and sun screen! We also both had pretty good times (under 45 minutes for 10k) and don't worry, I still managed to beat Sandi (even though I didn't get to go on the podium like she did!). On Sunday (the race was Saturday) we finally got to go for a long bike ride that we need to be doing for our Ironman training and we haven't been able to do for various reasons like the weather, etc. and we go to bike 100 km. It was really nice weather and we were really lucky (the rest of this week not so much so far).

Ok I guess that's it for now. We don't have any other trips planned any time soon except I will likely go to Marseille for work at the end of the month to present our project and our friend Thony will likely come to Grenoble for a visit at the start of June. We wanted to go to Italy for the 4-day weekend but the plane tickets are very expensive and the trains are not going well in Italy right now (constant strikes).. Also tonight is the debate between Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy with the final vote this Sunday (go Hollande [obviously])...

À la prochaine...