Exploring Paris.

Dear All,

The game plan for this weekend was to see as many of the “have-to-see’s” in Paris as possible.  We managed the following:

·         Notre Dame (A church that the French started building in 1163, it was only completed in 1272 – 109 years later).  If you see the amount of detail and magnitude of this structure one would understand why it took so long.  To think that the poor contract manager that started this contract never saw the end product is very sad!! 

·         The Grande Louvre (The world’s most famous museum).  This building dates back to 1200.  One of the most famous art pieces housed at the museum includes the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, painted between 1503  and 1505.  Apparently he loved this piece so much that he always carried it with him.  Mr Miller, we do appreciate your passion for art much more after this visit.

·         The Eiffel Tower.  Say no more. 

·         The Avenue Champs Elysees (This is the road where the Tour de France ends).  Such a vibey road!  The old buildings and rich architecture are awesome, not to mention all the famous brand name shops – Keith and I were extremely glad that the wives weren’t with us to abuse the credit cards!  Expensive doesn’t even begin to describe it – we even had to pay 2 Euro (R18) to make a wee!!!!.

One can write paragraphs on all four of these awesome historical masterpieces, but words won’t do them justice.

In between visiting these historical venues, we tried do some shopping, but did not manage to find anywhere that was feasible for our SA rands.  There were four in our “tour of Paris” group (Pravan- Chemical engineer from Sasol, Deon- Kelder Meester from Distell, Keith and Albertyn).  The general consensus amongst us was that  as South Africans we have a very good life back at home – quality, value for money, and reasonable service..  

We arrived back at the hotel at 7:30pm on Saturday evening and you guys won’t believe it, but we decided to head for the nearest laundry to do some washing (for some of us it a was a first experience – we won’t disclose any names)  with a few beers thrown in of course!. 

We spend a total of about 18 hours on our feet exploring this week-end.  Albertyn also managed to get in a few early morning runs . Keith’s excuse is still that he forgot his running shoes back at home and he hasn’t found a bargain buy for a new pair of running shoes. We will sort him out this week though. 

This week’s lectures include 2 half day sessions of French classes, lectures in international negotiations and project management, a site visit to the world’s biggest market for fresh products, and 2 cocktail parties with our host company and the French Chamber of Commerce.  A busy week!

We did manage to pick up in the media that Mr. Malema’s nationalization strategy did not succeed, what a relief!

See attached photos of the weekends visits.

Keep well and chat soon.