8:00 AM - woke up to my alarm this morning and looked out the window - blah. What a hideously grey and rainy morning, and I have a full day of outdoor stuff to do! Yet, I literally watched out the window for about 10 minutes, and the grey clouds literally blocked out the top of the Eiffel Tower (see player left, click for larger). In all of the European Union, only the UK, western France and Spain will not see rain today. Supposed to clear off here in Paris and warm up this afternoon, and then be nicer tomorrow.
Boulevard périphérique de Paris (the "peripheral boulevard of Paris") is a ring-road that goes around the entire city (see map right, click for larger) - the busiest and most unbelievably-congested freeway in all of Europe. It flows right under my hotel window by the Palais des Congres - I'm at the exit named Porte Maillot in the northwest corner.
This freeway creates the borders of Paris proper (2 million people) and it's suburbs in every direction (9 million). I was just watching it out the window and realized I've never seen it when it's not bumper-to-bumper (see picture left, click for larger) in both directions. Only late at night does it finally calm down. This photo was taken at 9:25 AM, which would seem like very late for rush hour traffic. At 7 PM, after I'd come back from the Congress for the day, it would still be backed up like this.Thought I'd find out more about why. Learned that, according to Wikipedia, more than 1.2 million cars, transporting the equivalent of the entire population of Alberta (over 2 million people), will use this freeway today alone. Mind-boggling.
BBC's top new story this morning came from North Korea, which has just announced it has enriched uranium for the first time (had done the same with plutonium recently). This gives it a 2nd way to create a nuclear weapon, violating many world treaties. South Korea has rightly called this 'intolerable', and Japanese and European leaders are calling it outrageous - many of the Eastern NATO countries in Europe would be within range of a rocket attack. I'm glad my friend Chris isn't visiting Seoul anymore.
On a lighter note, a bizarre video is playing on CNN International this morning of an interview done in Tokyo recently with the brand-new First Lady of Japan, Miyuki Hatoyama (her husband was elected just two days ago as Prime Minister). She once wrote in a book that she rode on a triangular-shaped UFO to Venus, but now claims on a Japanese talk show that she eats the sun every morning for breakfast: “Like this, yum, yum, yum. It gives me enormous energy.” She also confessed her husband does the same. She also met Tom Cruise in a previous life, and he was Japanese.
If I were in Tokyo, I'd be calling my local government Elections office and demanding I get my vote back.
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