Bordeaux

When I returned to France after 7 weeks in Australia I was expecting to return to work pretty much straight away but as it turns out I couldn't start for another few weeks. I had to have a "welcome to France" interview and a medical exam first, which was scheduled for mid July. So in the mean time I went down to Bordeaux to stay with a friend of mine (Sandrine) whose parents live down there.

Apart from being one of the main wine growing regions in France it is also a really nice city. Apparently until a few years ago it was a dump but it has been done up (all the beautiful old buildings have been cleaned) and it is a really nice small city, with lots of little pedestrian streets lined with shops and cafes and quite a few gorgeous old buildings in a similar style to Paris.

The first few days I spent just walking around Bordeaux and hanging out with Sandrine. In the evenings I ate at home with her family and then went out with Sandrine and her friends in the evenings. Her family was really friendly and very nice tome - cooking lots of vege food (which I am sure they are not used to doing) as well as delicious pies and desserts! Later in the week Sandrine and I went to St Emilion which is a gorgeous medieval village known for it's wine. We tried some wines and walked around the town that was situated on a hill over looking the vineyards.

Another day we did a wine tour of Medoc, which involved visiting some chateaux as well as getting a bit of history of wine making and a tour of the cellars before tasting the wines. I wasn't that keen to do a tour but the wineries don't do the cellar door thing over here, so you have to be on a tour to do wine tasting, and in the end it was actually quite a good tour.

On the last day we went to the beach. It was my first French beach experience and I really enjoyed it. First we went to Dune de Pilar - Europe's largest sand dune, which was huge!! The beach on the other side was fairly quiet (for a European beach) and we spent a few hours swimming and hanging out at the beach. Afterwards we stopped off at Arcachon, which is a famous beach holiday town. It was a cute town but the beach was packed and very European, with boats and people, balls and toys everywhere, children’s rides along the beach, and stands selling ice cream and junky souvenirs. It was quite kitsch but I am glad I went.

The last night was Sandrine's birthday so we all went out to dinner to a lovely French restaurant and had a 6-course meal. They even made special vege food for me - I had fettuccini with truffles as a main. It was the first time I had tried truffles and I loved them!

Here are the photos. They are a bit mixed up between all the places I visited:

Bordeaux

So since then I have had my welcome to France thing and have started back at work. Not a lot has been happening (Paris in august is completely dead). I have just been hanging out with my friends and getting back into Paris life - ie hanging out in Cafes drinking wine. But tomorrow Daniel and Sue arrive (friends from Sydney) and on the weekend we are going to Croatia for a week. So stay tuned for more news and photos from that trip!