June has flew by! I can’t believe I haven’t made a blog entry since the 7th Quite a bit has happened since then, for today I’ll only write about our trip to Bordeaux, and will try to catch up to present day before… our next big excursion!
So we went to Bordeaux. We took the train the morning of Andre’s day off, a Tuesday, and we were in the city by lunch time. We made the trek to Bordeaux to visit my friend Carly who has been living there with her boyfriend Clement. Clement met us at the station because Carly had to work. After a quick walk to check out the local market Clement made us a fantastic lunch of shrimps, salad, and homemade mayonnaise. Then we took the tram to Carly’s work. The tram in Bordeaux is very impressive. It is also a perfect way to see the town because of its large windows and how easily and smoothly it glides through the town.
After enjoying a drink with Carly and Clement at her work after she had finished her shift, we headed back to their apartment with the intent of heading out to a vineyard for a wine tour. We ended up being too late though, and were only lucky enough to see the chateaus of the vineyards as we drove around the various fields of grapes.
When we got back to their apartment Clement made us a delicious dinner of buckwheat crepes stuffed with cheese, eggs, and meat. It was amazing. After dinner there was a concert in town. Virgin radio was holding the concert for free. The headliner was VV Brown with her song “Shark in the Water” which incidentally plays on Virgin radio all the time. After hearing “Shark in the Water” we abandoned the free concert and went to visit some of Carly and Clement’s friends at their apartment a short walk away. It was a lot of fun. Most of their friends spoke a little bit of English so it was a night of fun conversation; me with my broken French and they with their bits of English, and Andre as our interpreter!
The next morning Carly had to work and Clement had a lunch meeting to prepare for so after a nice breakfast of chocolate croissants, pain aux raisin and coffee Andre and I headed out for some tourist fun. We went to see the Fountaine des Girondins; which when on the tram the day before, Clement had told us was dismantled during the war with the intent to melt the metal for weapon construction. They didn’t find the dismantled statuary until many years after the war had ended. It is very beautiful. We also went to a wine store to pick out our Bordeaux wine that we had been denied the day before. Then we continued our walk to the Place de la Bourse. We had seen pictures and post cards of this place and assumed it was a grand castle. It was surprising to find out that it is simply the buildings of the city, and the grand mirrored water in front is actually a specially designed fountain that projects the buildings as clear as a mirror. The fountain’s shallow waters are changed as well through its own mechanised system to ensure the purity of its reflection.
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