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Published: September 14th 2009
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The bay near Cote du Bourg
Cote du Bourg sits on a hill which overlooks a bay to the west. The day started off with another fabulous breakfast; this time with much more company. The Americans who ran the marathon yesterday and the Canadians joined me for our morning feast as we discussed the day’s activities. Eventually, Yusilov joined us, too.
While we were dining, the Latvians were out running. This after completing the marathon yesterday. Those SOBs are nuts. What would possess them to do that? Maybe there is still a Soviet regime in charge.
While the others had a fun filled day of touring the countryside and doing some tastings at the local chateaus, Yusilov and I had to make our way down to Bordeaux city to catch our train. We were able to join the group for the first stop at Cote du Bourg, a tiny village with a large outdoor food market on Sundays, since it was on the way.
Our planning for the ride down was a bit strange. Yusilov has a GPS on his phone but doesn’t use it often because it drains his battery. So we mostly relied on our sense of direction and road signs to navigate our way out of the countryside to the nearest highway, several miles away.
Pyrenees
A view of the Pyrenees from the train. The Pyrenees separate Spain from France. Somehow, we found it without a problem and had no issues getting to the station. It took him a while to fill the car up with diesel fuel before we could return it and go into the station. This put me a little too close for comfort, since I still needed to print my ticket.
I went to one of the electronic kiosks and of course that didn’t work. Short on time, we raced into the station and spoke to a woman at the ticket office. Well, spoke is a bit aggressive. She didn’t understand any English so I pulled out a paper with all the details written on it. I was prepared for this after the last week of no one speaking English. This worked fine and we made the train.
The ride to Madrid took about eight and a half hours, with one brief change in Irun, Spain. In Irun, when I was waiting in line to get my ticket, some crazy English speaking guy (I think American) cut in line and came up to the window, shouting at the ticket guy that he had to get to Madrid and couldn’t wait in line. Everyone just sort of stared at him in with a baffled look as none of us could understand what his problem was. I suspect this might have been his first time in public in several years. No wonder foreigners dislike American travelers.
Along the way, I started reading
The Revolution, the book written by Ron Paul, one of the Republican party’s potential candidates last fall. It’s been a fascinating read so far. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in government and politics. Actually, I’d recommend it to anyone. It’s a bit radical, in the sense that many of his ideas fall outside the mainstream politicians’ views. But some of it just might work. Plus he’s a supporter of a much more limited federal government so he gets points from me for that.
Also, on the train, I had a ham and cheese sandwich. I’ve had many ham and cheese sandwiches this trip but this particular one was downright delicious. It was heated and used prosciutto. Mmmm…
I arrived in Madrid at about 10:15 and navigated another subway system without a problem. I didn’t even know Madrid had a subway until yesterday. It’s a lot like Paris and seems to work very well.
Tomorrow is my only day in Madrid so I’ll be touring and hopefully going on a Tapas tour with the same company with which I did tours in Paris.
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