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Published: October 16th 2011
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Vineyard
At the first château Bordeaux
This Tuesday and Wednesday, for my two days off, I decided to travel to Bordeaux with my colleague's girlfriend, who has been visiting him for a week. A stranger to me, Adrienne was an awesome travel buddy! The trip was quite wonderful, though stressful at times due to transportation issues...
The little train that could
The 1st of these issues arose as soon as we got to the train station Tuesday at 6h45 AM for our 6h56 AM train. The self-service machines where I normally print my tickets prior to boarding was out of service. An employee at the station, thinking I was simply a "dumb tourist" proceeded to show me how to work the machine, which clearly still didn't work. He told us to just board the train without tickets, and to get them printed in Paris during our transfer. We boarded the train and sought out the controller to explain the situation. He said it shouldn't be a problem and to just find some seats for the ride. Mid-ride, he found me and explained that we had a 20 minute delay and that my transfer in Paris would be tight, but possible.
On
arrival at the Paris Gare du Nord, we bought metro tickets and boarded right away into a very crammed car. We got off at the Gare Montparnasse (a new station for me) and tried to print our tickets there. Turns out, their machines were also out of service...great! I went to stand in line (with everyone else in the station) to have the tickets printed at the desk. With 10 minutes before our train, I explained the situation to the man, who looked at me with pity and said: "There is a strike today. Your train is cancelled. You didn't know?"
Here is one thing you should know about France: they are always on strike about something or other. Yes, I knew they were on strike, but the train company's website had led me to believe that our train would still run. No go.
He did get us on the next train to Bordeaux, about an hour later than planned and was "nice enough" not to charge us extra, since I had purchased the tickets on sale.
The problem now was, although we were going to Bordeaux with tickets in hand, we'd miss our wine tour with
Travel buddies
Me and Adrienne during the wine tour our new train's arrival. Unwilling to accept this, Adrienne and I found a pay phone, which true to French habit didn't take coins. I used my credit card, called the Bordeaux Tourism Office and explained to them that our train would arrive in town at 1h15, we'd take the 15 minute-tram-ride and arrive right on time for our 1h30 wine tour, so would they please just wait a few minutes for us in case we were late? They said they'd try, but they couldn't guarantee anything.
We managed to get on our train without any further incident, but the real fun started when we got to Bordeaux. We sprinted off our car in front of all the others and we searched for a ticket booth for the tram line. Guess what? The machine was broken too! We found a new machine, purchased our tickets, hoped on the tram, got off at the right stop and then realised we had no idea where exactly the tourism office woule be. But not to worry: there was a huge coach with "Office du tourisme" written on it's side waiting near the tram line. I ran towards it waving (like a crazy person,
Strange animal projection on wall
As part of Evento festival (we think) I am sure). A woman yelled, "Are you the Landry ladies?!" and made sure we got on the bus. Afterwards, we could finally breath and begin to enjoy our lovely weekend in Bordeaux!
The wine tour led us to 2 châteaux in the Entre-deux-mers region. At both, we were guided by the owner/wine maker, which made the tour very interesting. We got to try 3 wines at the first spot(white, clairé, red), and 2 at the others (2 reds, one of which was award-winning).
Feeling much better after this tour, we strolled through Bordeaux on the hunt for our hostel. A small, but cozy room very close to the train station. We got dressed and went out for supper at a Portuguese restaurant - delicious!
A nice surprise for us was that we'd arrived in Bordeaux during an art festival, Evento. On Tuesday evening, we walked the streets and kept finding strange animal projections on the walls; lions with hoofed paws, caribous with chicken bodies...who knows, it was art! There was one in particular that I thought was awesome. Two 15 year old kids were on a balcony, decked out in strobe-spot lights, having what looked like
a silent rave. They had mixing tables on the balcony but were wearing headphones so that no one could hear their music. However, after further investigation, turns out there was a set of headphones on the street for passer-by’s to listen in with. How cool!
On Wednesday morning, we got a nice breakfast of baguette and date jam and then set out for a bus tour of the city. We got to see a lot more than we'd planned (we thought it was a walking tour); Bordeaux has a very interesting history. We spent our afternoon walking around, taking lots and lots of pictures and exploring the public gardens. A bit of shopping and some milkshakes later, we were back at the hostel to pick up our bags.
The train ride home was a breeze compared to the ride there. We did have a delay in our first train, making our connections extremely tight, but by some luck, our second train got delayed a bit as well - perfect timing!
I am attempting to post a public link to my facebook pictures, because the amount that I put here does not do the city justice! Hope it works 😊
Facebook pictures I am now attempting to book my next trips - perhaps London or Switzerland. Until next time!
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