Steph, Alex, and I (as well as two other people from ILOG) attended
the Microsoft
Developer Conference (PDC) 2003 in Los Angeles. We arrived on
Saturday 25th and left one week later so we got a chance to visit the
city and did some shopping.
Sunday was the day I walked the most in my entire life. We knew
that L.A is a big town but we chose to do many things by
ourselves. Anyway, we walked around our hotel, then we took a cab to
go to Samy's Camera on Fairfax Avenue where Alex bought his new
digital camera. Then, we chose to walk from there to Hollywood
Boulevard - and we did it! My god, that was long...
The next step was to eat, so we got lunch in a poor restaurant
(rated 'C' but we didn't know what the letter means at that time). We
continued our trip and walked on Hollywood Boulevard during 2 hours. I
was looking for a Ninja Turtle outfit but that's another story...
Then, we decided to see the ocean so we took a cab to Santa
Monica. The driver was kind enough to show us Rodeo drive, Beverly
Hills, and a few other nice places. At Santa Monica, we walked on the
beach, took pictures of a sunset, and encountered a beach party.
The night approaching, we decided to go on the Third Street
Promenade at Broadway for dinner. We walked there and continued our
adventure in this merchand main street. At last, we picked a nice pub,
the Yankee Doodles, and got a beer and dinner. After that long day, we
came back to the hotel and hit the sack.
The next days were quite fun too. To make a long story short, the
conference was interesting, the food was nice especially what we got
in this trendy restaurant on tuesday night, the weather was perfect
and the attendee party at the Universal Studios awesome.
The last anecdote I have to mention here is that Stephane has been
pigging out by eating all kind of junk food (redvines, root beer,
chocolate and peanut butter cookies...) or ice creams (I saw him
wolfing down 4 of them in less than 20 minutes). What a week!
Thierry.
