I visited INRIA Nancy in December 2012 as a thesis committee member of Anass. It was cold. The weather was much better during my May 2017 visit this time, to wrap up the first 3D printing project that we started a long time ago.
The trip duration was suggested by Jonas and finalized to be between May 5 and 18 to take advantage of cheap flight ticket. I do not have to pay for the flight and hotel, but I still like to keep the prices low. It turned out that Monday May 8 is a holiday in France, so we agreed that it is better for me to stay in Paris for the weekend.
I was able to find pretty good hotel deals this time for both Paris and Nancy through bookings.com.
They also sent me ticket deals that could have allowed me to bypass long lines to the museums which I spent the entire weekend at due to the raining weather, but I did not carefully read and thus missed the deals. There were security checks at the museum entrances due to recent terrorist attacks.
I always like visiting religious institutions so I spent the Sunday evening in one.
The TGV ride from Paris to Nancy was pleasant and efficient as usual. I opted for Apparteo Nancy, a student dorm, instead of a hotel in the Nancy city center. The light rail in Nancy was very nice and convenient. I was embarrassed to get lost a bit on my first day to INRIA.
I sat at Jeremie’s old seat. Fortunately I could use the eduroam wifi network as other options either involve more administrative work or provide less reliable connection. The lunch vouchers are very good, because INRIA provide the best meals in the entire Nancy city (or even the Lorraine province). I like the way INRIA folks take time for and discuss research over lunch and coffee, instead of rushing through meals.
We brainstormed many ideas, and I got my hands dirty with the printers. I was amazed by the toolset Sylvain developed that included everything for 3D printing: mesh processing, a lua scripting interface, etc. The project is finally completed this time and I hope the paper will be published soon.
The only way to work inside INRIA during the weekend is by asking some Chinese postdoc to open the door for me. He took me to a nearby McDonald for lunch, which turned out to the worst possible choice in France: expensive, unhealthy, and plain bad food. I forced him to a kebab shop for the next lunch.
I tried different places for dinners, mostly low price local places (around 5 EUR). I joined their intern party which took place in a nice bar followed by a good meal in a nice Lebanese restaurant starting at 9 pm. They told me that the French usually started dinner at 7 pm.
The place Stanislav is nice as usual, especially during the warm weather.
I wish I could have tried the cheese fondue but it was only for two people.
Jonas took me to dinner the last night and we went for a sushi place so that I can judge the authenticity for him (not bad, operated by Vietnamese).
This is the first time that I took a long trip back right in front of a major paper deadline; it is not as bad as I expected even though I would not recommend.
