Salon de Provence, France.
Salon de Provence. A relatively small, quaint and quiet place in beautiful southern France. The weather here is amazing, and the landscape reminds me of a mountainous Florida. Since we are not too far from the Mediterranean, palm trees, grapevines, and olive trees are abundant. But yet, when you look off into the horizon, you see large rolling hills and mountains, rather than the flat, marshy lands that you might expect from a tropical climate. Here, we are attending L'ecole de Air, which is the French Air Force Academy. The academy is fairly strict, but our guide is Captain Laurent, and he is quite an amazing guy. We were able to meet the headmaster of the Academy on the first day, who happened to be a two-star general. We took some pictures, but unfortunately I don't have a digital copy to share.
In our leisure times, we have found ourselves exploring the city center of Salon. Unsurprisingly, it is filled with beautiful architecture and historic monuments that are older than our country. We stumbled upon a castle, went inside, and then were promptly kicked out by museum staff (oops). It turns out, this was the place that Nostradamus was buried, and remains there today (in case you forgot, Nostradamus was the guy who predicted the world to end in 2012).
On Tuesday, we went on a field trip to Cannes, home of some famous film festival (not too hip on pop culture, so I wasn't familiar). We visited Thales-Alenia space, which was compared to the Boeing/Lockheed of the EU. We went inside, and sure enough -- it exceeded every expectation that I had. They build their satellites from T0 to delivery, and oversee every part of the integration, assembly, and testing; all in-house in the facility on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Their turnaround time for a typical satellite design cycle was 24-30 months, which was absolutely mind-boggling to me, that you could design, manufacture, test and deliver a cutting-edge, $200-300M piece of space technology that quickly. Not only was the facility amazing, but the city was awesome too. What a place to work.
That's all I've got for now! Up next: wine and olive oil tasting in Aix en Provence at the oldest winery and oil mill in France, and then soap-making at the oldest soap factory in France.
Go Blue!