Sunday, August 7, 2011

Guiana Space Centre

CNES-Centre National D`Etudes Spatiales.

Very excited we drove to the Ariane Space Centre just out of town.  The tour has to be booked in advance and is for free.  You have to take your passport along and exchange that for a visitors` card,   which you receive back after the tour.  Lots of people were loaded into buses with a guide in the front. 


 But oh my, the whole three hours driving around looking at buildings and trucks were in French!   It felt as if I was paging through a French leaflet about the Space Centre!  We sat back,   got really bored until we reached the new launching site.  At least we could figure out what was going to happen there for ourselves.  Afterwards we heard that it is a new site and has never been used before.  On our return we went to the Jupiter Hall to watch a video,   also in French.  We sat behind the VIP control room watching the video.  It is a pity no one bothered to put sub titles in English for some tourists.


For the French people on the tour it must have been very interesting, because it looked like the guides were very well informed, but for us…?

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