Blogs from Bordeaux, Aquitaine, France, Europe - page 19

In Bordeaux, we stayed at an Ibis Hotel across the Gironne River, so we got to cross the port de pierre many times! Such a beautiful bridge, especially during night. There was a lot of construction along the waterfront, and the trams are brand new, so Bordeaux is kind of undergoing a revitalization of sorts I suppose. Bordeaux reminds me of Trinidad, Cuba because all the roofs are made of the same material and the the architecture seems similar to me. It's a very pretty city, but can get kind of boring to hang out in. The shopping along pedestrian and tram only streets is very nice though! Saint-Catherine is the main pedestrian shopping street (just like in Montreal, but only without the cars, it's excellent!) Unfortunately, every store it seems we went into played really ... read more

Our first stop after Paris was Bayeux in Normandy. Normandy was a lot like southland with green rolling hill country. While based in Bayeux we ventured out and explored the D day beaches, and associated sights. The stand out amongst these sights was the Pont du Hoc. At this location on June 6 1944 a small group of American rangers climbed the cliffs to claim back the guns which threatened both Omaha and Utah beaches. It was a successful mission, only there were no guns there - just diguises. Of the 250 men that started they finished with 90, but did hold out the germans for a number of days, and found the guns further in land which they distroyed. Remaining at the hoc are huge holes in the ground from aerial bombing, and a lot ... read more

Hello everybody! This morning, we slept in!!! Yay!!! It was fantastic, except we had to get up eventually because they stop serving breakfast at 10:00 at the motel and we were hungry! I'm not quite sure on why they're so strict about not serving breakfast after 10:00, since all they have is different cereals and pastries sitting in baskets, and for that matter, I don't know why they call it "serving", but anyway, not to matter. Oh, and before I forget, for all you grammatically sensitive people, I'm extremely sorry for spelling barrel incorrectly in my blog yesterday...I looked at it a thousand times and one 'l' just didn't look right, so I went for two, big mistake. Anyway, that having been said, after breakfast we went for a walk around Bordeaux again, and decided to ... read more

Hello everybody! We're in Bordeaux tonight. We caught the train from Paris at 10:10 this morning and arrived at a bit after 1:00 in the afternoon. Pretty good for what is usually a 7.5 hour drive. The trains are massive. We were in carriage 18, of about 20 I think, and each of the carriages are about the length of two of the passenger carriages in Brisbane, so it took us at least 10 minutes to walk along the platform to get to our carriage (although we did have heavy luggage...so that slowed us down). And it's SO fast!!! It kind of reminded me of that part in The Castle. You know when they're on the lake and the Dad says to "look at that", and the boy says "what?", and he points behind him and ... read more

DAY 1 - It was a couple of hours train trip from Toulouse to Bordeaux. After a long day I wanted to relax, however an elderly lady plumped herself down beside me and proceded to tell me her life story, as well as giving me advise on mine. As she spoke no English it was a bit draining concentrating on following her story, but she didn't seem to mind if I responded or not! She also had never heard of Australia... Bordeaux is well laid out with a zippy public transport system including 3 fast tram lines around the city. It seemed a bit like a mini Paris due to its wide boulevards, public squares, pedestrianised streets and imposing monuments. I recommend "Hotel Touring" (as per Lonely Planet) as it is run by a friendly family ... read more