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Jun. 29th, 2010 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienAix is an interesting town, with a lot of history. We got a quick primer yesterday, on a guided walking tour; most of the visible Old Town seems to be seventeenth-century, consisting of tall "hotels" in golden sandstone, facing each other across narrow streets with most of the display going into iron balustrades and ornamental stone trims, but hiding courtyards and gardens inside. We were also shown a hole in the middle of a narrow street, pretty much blocking it, where a routine utility dig turned up both medieval and Roman sewers, one above the other. Our guide was anxious that we not judge the place by the buildings that haven't yet had the grime of the coal era sandblasted away, but I suspect that to a lot of us the grubbier, shabbier buildings were actually more charming than the manicured ones. Little streetcorner shrines, high up on walls, often protected behind bars or wire mesh, are a common sight, as are fountains. The cathedral facade is topped by a figure of St George, skewering a rather small and disturbingly humanoid dragon. The random colossal heads scattered around the place, however, I gather are just part of a temporary exhibition.
This evening I bought a half-gallon (US -- 1.5L here) of spring water for about a dollar, which goes against the general trend of everything being more expensive here. On the other hand, dinner and a third-share in a bottle of wine came to about $50. It was good, though (pasta shells with tomato and goat cheese), and the service was reasonably efficient. And last night the reception nibbles were enough to convince me that I didn't need dinner at all, so it evens out.
Anchovy paste seems to be the condiment of choice here, and sardines are also in abundance.
The hotel breakfast is more generous than I remember cheap French-hotel breakfasts being on previous visits; juice *and* a hot beverage, and apple-sauce and yogurt as well as the canonical roll and croissant. On the other hand, it isn't included in the room cost.
The wifi offered both by the hotels and the conference center seems to vary from barely adequate to broken with no estimated time of repair, judging by the comments I'm hearing. (My hotel falling at the adequate end of the scale.) Of course a community of scientists with two shiny new high-volume data sources to play with is probably unusually hard on the infrastructure. I seem to remember reading somewhere that France has, or had until recently, a complete ban on wireless internet signals that could be picked up outdoors, which may explain the flakiness of the hardware, but the fact that Orange seems to have a virtual monopoly probably doesn't help either.
The plumbing is better than I remember, and both the hotel and the conference center have good air-conditioning, which makes life more comfortable.
This evening I bought a half-gallon (US -- 1.5L here) of spring water for about a dollar, which goes against the general trend of everything being more expensive here. On the other hand, dinner and a third-share in a bottle of wine came to about $50. It was good, though (pasta shells with tomato and goat cheese), and the service was reasonably efficient. And last night the reception nibbles were enough to convince me that I didn't need dinner at all, so it evens out.
Anchovy paste seems to be the condiment of choice here, and sardines are also in abundance.
The hotel breakfast is more generous than I remember cheap French-hotel breakfasts being on previous visits; juice *and* a hot beverage, and apple-sauce and yogurt as well as the canonical roll and croissant. On the other hand, it isn't included in the room cost.
The wifi offered both by the hotels and the conference center seems to vary from barely adequate to broken with no estimated time of repair, judging by the comments I'm hearing. (My hotel falling at the adequate end of the scale.) Of course a community of scientists with two shiny new high-volume data sources to play with is probably unusually hard on the infrastructure. I seem to remember reading somewhere that France has, or had until recently, a complete ban on wireless internet signals that could be picked up outdoors, which may explain the flakiness of the hardware, but the fact that Orange seems to have a virtual monopoly probably doesn't help either.
The plumbing is better than I remember, and both the hotel and the conference center have good air-conditioning, which makes life more comfortable.
