Pardon my French

Tuesday, May 21 A longer day at work than expected.  Things didn't go as planned and the batch behaved differently than the previous one despite only minor tweaks in our procedure.  Still, overall progress and learnings.   I got a kick out of visiting the bakery this morning to buy my sandwich and saw they offered both chocolatines and pains au chocolats 😆  Madames et messieurs: un pain au chocolat! This might be the first sandwich I've had in France that was round instead of cylindrical I've gotten much better at parking in the apartment garage, good thing too cause almost all the spots were filled tonight.  Dinner was just down the street at Jack the Cockerel.  It wasn't the only place open at 22h but it was one of the closest.  It was lively with beat heavy music in the background and a blend of themes.  Many young people were here, I think it's just across the way from a nightclub (boîte de nuit), I've never seen a night club open here i...

Monday, May 20 I set my alarm for this morning to be out of the house by 8; why the need to be out by 8?   Because today's big ticket event is on a strict timeline: watching the Olympic Flame pass through Biarritz!  I only needed to walk a few minutes to set up my spot on La Grande Plage for the Olympic torch to pass through.  I was at the corner of the beach and the Hotel Palais! I got my place, only had to elbow a few small children out of the way !  Hopefully the drizzling stops so people put their umbrellas down; people can be so inconsiderate, I mean, how else is a 6ft tall guy standing right at the barricade supposed to see what's happening?  It had rained hard last night and was it drizzling when I got set up, but the rain stopped just as the motorcade arrived.  Since we were on the big beach, the torch was exchanged a bit up the beach from me and there was some ceremony involving the torch bearer emerge from the waves with her surfboard.  ...

Sunday, May 19 The weather forecast was iffy but after hemming and hawing in the morning, I finally rolled the dice and got in the car.  I'd had the idea of visiting a Bordelaise province a while back and figured this could be one of my last weekends to make it happen, so today I'm off to the Médoc region.  This area follows the western bank of the Garonne north from Bordeaux and features two appellations: Médoc et Haut-Médoc.   While getting ready to leave, I spotted a surfer walking barefoot towards the beach to shred some waves. The drive was a little longer from Biarritz than from Dax (when the idea of visiting the Médoc first came into my head) but it was just over 2 hours to reach the town of Pauillac, one of the main towns in the Médoc region.  I walked around town and enjoyed some of the festivities associated with the lamb festival going on: garage sales along the length of the main street, some carnival stuff, plus music and tug-of-war contests. ...