Parti Paris Bonjour Bordeaux

23 March

Friday morning marked the beginning of the end of our time in Paris as we were heading to Bordeaux that day. After eating, packing, cleaning and sorting out the details of our departure of the apartment, we still had 3 hours to kill. We absolutely slaughtered one of those hours with a final stroll around the 14th arrondissement before returning to pick up our bags and heading off to the Gare Montparnasse. Dad was lacking something to do during the 3 hour train ride to Bordeaux so we stopped by the supermarket to buy wine.

We arrived at the train station a bit too early so we sat around and waited for the arrival of our train to be announced. I had a few coins burning holes in my pocket (except for the one cent ones, those are the most pointless things ever. I'd rather have no cents than just one of them) so I hit the convenience store and vending machines for snacks.

The train eventually pulled into the station and we were faced with the challenge of finding out where we were sitting. Our ticket said we were to be in car 17 but we couldn't see any numbers printed on the carriages. I assume we were just going to walk along until we found a car that looked like it would be the type to be numbered 17 because I certainly was counting how many we had already passed. At carriage number 10, we noticed that the cars were in fact numbered. We went past 7 more cars only to find we'd reached car number 14. I'm no mathematician, but I always thought that if you have 10 things and put 7 more things next to them, then you'd have 17 things. Turns out after we passed 10, the cars started counting back down from 20. I guess someone at the train yard that morning had been half asleep and attached the second half of the train on backwards. Eventually we found our allocated places and settled in for the ride.

I was surprised by how little people ate during the ride considering the train left close to 11 and wouldn't arrive until 2. The lady in front of us had an apple, the guy a cross the aisle took like one sip of water the entire time and the girl behind him ate nothing at all. Me and my dad, on the other hand, ploughed through 2 apples, 2 bottles of water, a bottle of ice tea, a bottle of wine, 2 bags of chips, 2 sandwiches and half a tube of mentos all before we were even close to Bordeaux. The view by our seats consisted solely of a grey window frame so we had to look out the opposite side to watch the French countryside roll by.

Disembarking the train, we realised that spending all out coins at the train was not the smartest idea, as we needed change to purchase our bus tickets. After buying an overpriced bottle of water to acquire some bus fare, we made our way to the Ibis Hotel. We checked in, dumped our stuff and went for a stroll.

Bordeaux has about two bridges that cross Garonne River, which is weird considering that in Paris there is a bridge that crosses the Seine every 50 metres and the Garrone is probably twice as wide and certainly just as long (but don't quote me on that). It is also the colour of poo but thankfully doesn't smell like it (you can quote me on this one). We walked over the Pont de Pierre towards the centre-ville in the extremely cramped pedestrian lane. The streets in Bordeaux have to accommodate for trams, cars and cyclists, resulting in the pedestrians having to walk single file along the footpaths with their arms scraping against the buildings. It is a very nice bridge though, and we made it to the end without getting pushed over the bannister into the water.

Bordeaux is a very pretty, fairy tale-esque town. All the buildings are made of stone with wooden shutters and curly iron railings. The roads are mostly cobblestone and there are plenty of squares and courtyards and the gigantic cathedral of St Michel. It's like a real life version of the happily ever after town in Shrek but with less ogres and more French people. Eventually we stumbled upon the main shopping street, Rue Sainte Catherine. It's a nice avenue but with the masses of people and McDonalds's signs and Apple stores sticking out the side of the buildings, it didn't seem quite as magical.

What was magical though was the carnival that was setup near the waterfront next to a gigantic fountain monument type thing. With stalls selling pure sugar in its various shapes and colours and all the usual fair games, it was not what I expected to see in the middle of such a city. The only thing missing were the hordes of sticky children but I'm sure they'd arrive in force come the weekend.

We walked back along the waterfront, past all the cyclists, joggers and rollerbladers (apparently people still do that here). We relaxed at the hotel until about 8.30 when we met up with Josh, who has been living with his girlfriend Nicole in Bordeaux for the last few months. Josh is the son of Jonathan, a good friend of the family while Nicole is originally from Lebanon and is currently working on her phD. My dad hadn't seen him in almost a decade so there was a lot of catching up to be done.

We hopped on a tram to head towards dinner in town. We learnt from Josh along the way about the most efficient way of paying for transport, which is to not pay at all. He'd been doing this for several months now and I bet there are plenty of people who have been doing it for years.

We ate at a fancy restaurant where we got prime seating underneath a dripping air conditioning unit. With Nicole translating the menu, we ordered plates of steak and duck and settled in for the evening. The entrées were interesting, particularly the liquified chowder as I have never drunk seafood before. The main dishes were served on flat black boards. I think this was supposed to be some sort of artistic statement but I'm pretty sure it's because they would be extremely easy to clean and dropping a whole lot of them on the kitchen floor would not be a loud, messy disaster. But the food was good and the evening was very enjoyable.

We headed home at about 11.30 but the streets were still packed with people out for the night who would undoubtedly be out for much, much longer.

It seems that Bordeaux follows a similar sleeping pattern to my regular one of staying up late and getting up even later as there was no one about when went for a walk the next morning. A nutella crepe each for breakfast sustained us for the entire day which ended up being a lot of walking around.

A protest had disrupted some of the tram lines and we came across it on our trek back to the hotel, finding an entire squad of kitted-out riot police ready to dish out some French crowd control if the demonstrations got out of hand. I wanted to stick around to see if a riot would indeed break out but the police started advancing menacingly in our direction so we decided to get out of there and head back to the safety of the hotel.