A very hectic 48 hours - Madrid-Milan-Paris

We are in Paris now after a pretty awful overnight train from Milan to Paris - we were crammed into tiny cabins with three storey bunks & windows that kept banging open, and one of our tour directors was robbed, we assume by the same two blonde men who tried to break into another room but ran off when one of our group woke up. Not the experience it was meant to be - it is the first and last time trains will be added to the itinerary I think.  Suddenly makes Iberia look a whole lot better, too....
As a result we were all less than our sparkling best for the L'Oreal visit today (we weren't able to check into our rooms so only a few of us managed showers), but it was still really interesting. We were treated to a champagne lunch then received presentations from four different managers of various parts of the business.  The case studies around the success of Kiehl's in South Korea and the recent launch of a new Garnier Fructis 2-in-1 shampoo plus oil in India were particularly interesting. 

We visited Mediaset in Milan yesterday, which was also very interesting and contained very up-to-the-minute info on the pay TV market, the switch to digital TV, and the relaunch last week of a website which allows viewers to download full episodes of TV shows.  It was also interesting to see the use of branding extend to the company logo (the white flower) being used on steps as a warning, instead of the yellow strips we generally use.  We then had the afternoon free in Milan, our only taste of Italy on this trip, which was just beautiful. We managed to fit in a nice lunch, the Duomo and the Castle, coffee and gelati, then a group dinner before the train. And yes, it's still cold - Milan seemed to hover between -1 and 1 the whole 24 hours we were there, which was a bit of a shock to the system after Madrid!

We finished off our first day in Paris with a cheap and very cheerful meal at Chartier, just around the corner from our hotel, the Hotel Opera Cadet, which is in a very pretty traditional street. 

We finally have internet again so I  promise to upload more pics (and work out how to add more than one per post) very soon, but need to catch up on some sleep now.