Business destinations

With a wide range of shops, reception lounges and even business centres in stations, rail transport is also competing with air transport when it comes to services. Photo: Gare de Lyon.

At the same time as extending high-speed lines, SNCF is transforming Paris stations, particularly Gare du Nord, the departure point for Eurostar and Thalys trains.

Poliwood" is the buzzword in Washington. They've finally found a word to describe the new face of the federal capital where, between charities and visits to the Prez', the glitter has been raining down for almost a year. Having retreated to New York or the West Coast after Bill Clinton left the banks of the Potomac, the stars are taking advantage of the arrival of a highly photogenic President to make a comeback in DC.

An ideal gateway to Southeast Asia. Such is the image of this country of 63 million inhabitants, a favoured anchorage point for foreign investors, with a stock of direct investment of nearly 89 billion dollars, or more than a third of Thailand's GDP. Foreign investment is a cardinal concept for this open economy, where exports account for almost two-thirds of gross domestic product, triggering a veritable economic boom in the 80s and 90s.

From hell to heaven may be just a few millimetres. Bangkok proves this every day, and whether visitors are comfortably seated in a small restaurant by the river, or lost pedestrians on a major thoroughfare on a hot day, they can experience the full range of human feelings: from the most exquisite rapture to extreme disgust.

"Our five-star service, the attention we pay to our passengers, but also the superior quality of our equipment makes us very competitive."

There was the very first time. It was in 1982, when a white pyramid pierced by a thousand windows took up residence on the now famous Corniche. It was the Sheraton, Doha's first international hotel. 1 And then nothing. Until 2000, when an InterContinental appeared. And very quickly, as if things had finally got moving, a Ritz-Carlton, followed by a Four Seasons. Not just a hotel, this Four Seasons is a veritable little museum, with its own collection of works of art worth 2 million dollars.

In Doha, the Four Seasons has chosen the prominent West Bay district as the location for a huge complex encompassing a museum and a hydrotherapy centre.

In Abu Dhabi, as in other Gulf capitals, the evolution of architectural forms and materials is striking. And the latest projects completed or underway rival each other in boldness and innovation.

Shopping in all its forms has found its setting in the sands of the Gulf: gigantism, luxury, entertainment and... air conditioning.

It was on an Ajaccio-Lyon flight that I fainted, I was 24 or 25. "I'll never fly again", I decided that day. ...

Our life is nothing but movement", wrote Montaigne in his Essais. Over the last twelve years, the prefecture of Gironde has put into practice the maxim of the man who will remain - probably for eternity - its most illustrious mayor.