Marc's Public Blog - Trips to other locations

Jennifer and I did a quick visit of Melbourne before the conference, and long story short, it was ok, but not as interesting as some other cities in my opinion.
When we arrived, we just had a quick look at downtown, and Jennifer invited me to see Monty Python's Spam A Lot musical , which was quite entertaining.

To make things interesting, the next day we rented a car, and drove to the Healesville Sanctuary , where I was hoping we'd find some roaming animals, and have the chance to interact a bit with some of the animals (like feed/pet wallabies and emus), but the place felt more like a zoo.
Speaking of driving, I didn't find it overly hard, except for the following:

• shifting with the left hand, I had a sometimes a hard time getting the right stick throw and would get 2nd instead of 4th gear or 3rd instead of 5th.
  
• The turn signals are moved to the other side of the steering wheel. That was the worst thing: each time I tried to turn, I set off the windshield wipers
  
• Also, I would tend to drive a bit too far on the left of the road due to my seat being on the wrong side.

All in all, it wasn't that bad though, and thanks to my Garmin GPS with Australian routable maps, we got where we needed without problems.

We then went to the nearby Yarra wine country and visited 3 different wineries, which made Jennifer very happy :), and finished the evening by driving up Mount Dandenon . It was only 2000ft high, but the poor little stick shift 60 horsepower rental I got, really had a hard time climbing us up, and I had to stick to 2nd gear :)

After all this, one of the evenings, we went to Melbourne Museum , as invited by the conference, and amount other things, we saw the last first generation computer left on earth, on par with ENIAC. That was cool to see.

So little to do, so little time...

We first spent 4 days with my dad , had the usual Jan 1st lunch at Geneviève's , and then spent a few days with my mom .

My dad, among other things, took us to Park Astérix , which was cold as shit :), half closed, but it was nice to see what was open, as well as the ice skating show that my dad's friend setup there.

We tried to spend a little time visiting Paris , namely La citée des sciences et de l'industrie @ La Villette, seeing an IMAX movie at La Géode, visiting le Pantéon , and an exposition on the TGV at le Grand Palais.

After a couple of days with my Mom, we did the usual trip to Holland to see all my aunts, uncles, nephews, and nieces.

And after just being back from Holland, we barely had enough time to pack, and see Rani, Severine, and Benji for dinner:

After all this excitement and little sleep before the monday morning plane, we ended back up in SFO, but without our luggage :( (although it should get there by tomorrow, I'm told). Thank you again Air France, and the lazy ass folks who work at CDG.