This evening a large part of the ICES team arrived at Bordeaux airport to kick off the very first parabolic flight campaign for an ice and dust agglomeration experiment in microgravity. Remaining team members will arrive later this week. For many of our team's experimenters this will be the first time to participate in a microgravity experiment. Arriving from Scotland, Germany, and the Netherlands, the group has hired two cars to transport equipment and participants back and forth from the workshop at Novespace (located at the Bordeaux airport) and our accomodation each day. During the two week campaign in Bordeaux, the team will be staying at the Chateaux Sentout just 30 km southeast of the airport.

The garden in front of our house (left) and the chateaux from the front courtyard (right).

After navigating the narrow, winding roads in the hillside near the chateaux, and settling into our 8-person house on the grounds of the chateaux, we searched long and hard for an open supermarket to grab a meal on a Sunday night in France. While we found many signs advertising a grocery store that was open on Sundays, we failed to find the actual store. Instead we sat down at a small, four-table pizzeria on the main road along the river to our chateaux before settling in for the night.