France (Bordeaux)

Woohoo. Ok the blog is back up and running now. Going to update our travels across Eastern Europe and will try to maintain a more play by play account of our South East Asian travels next year. Been a while since I got tapping on the keyboard. Good to be back.

Anyways a lot has happened since the last update. I found my soulmate and am getting married next year in London. I spent 6 months back in London, before relocating to Barcelona for 11 months of not as much bliss as we had hoped. Now I am sitting here in Paris with Shy'M on the music tv, a fading lightbulb and my own failing eyesight as the modus operandi for the blog. Anyway enough of this. Just going to make myself a quick steak burger before I sit down to this. Oh yeah I am wearing glasses now. Makes the light shine brighter from the screen.

Ok I finished. We left Barcelona under a cloud of darkness. Well not really, but we escaped without having to see the wicked witch of the west who was our landlady. I had forgotten about her until writing this blog entry brought it all back. Less said about her the better. Anyway we caught the morning train to the border. It was supposed to be a quickish trip to Bordeaux, but our first connection was horribly delayed due to a train on fire or strikes or something very French. Then our second train was stopped in Carcassone for someone who had an attck of some kind (Not sure what kind but they got stretchered off). Perhaps they were allergic to bureaucracy or delays and the TGV pushed them over the edge. At least we got two benefits from this. One was stopping right in front of Carcassone castle. After Ollie introduced us to the game it was fun to be opposite the real one. Super impressive as well. We may go and visit it next summer on a swing through the South of France. The other benefit was unlimited food delivered to the train. It was ok, but we got a lot of it. Naturally I tucked in. We also found a cool Husky dog. Eventually, about 12 hours after setting off, we arrived in Bordeaux and I waited and got abused by a French cleaner, while Cannelle went to meet her sister. We had left all our bags on the platform (8 I think) and she decided she needed to clean that part of the platform now. She wanted me to move the bags. All eight. Stupid woman. I explained that I was waiting for Cannelle, but she insisted and reported me to the station manager. Bear in mind I speak no French. He came to speak to me and I explained the situation. To his credit he let me wait there, but the old bitch was clearly unhappy and I still think she wanted to sweep through my bags. Good start. We met up with Babout, Jessica and Cyril and headed back to their flat.

The next day we went for a tour of the city. It has changed a lot from the shithole that it was in 2003 and 2000 (the last two times I was there). I finally got to see the work from all the digging up they were doing back then. I now understand why Francois liked it and I didn't. We saw it either side of the doing up period. We saw the water mirror, which is kind of like Bordeaux's beach and hung out there a bit. I was a little lost in the conversation and it was a foreshadowing of my early Paris experiences. I am somewhat out of my depth in French, but hopefully bit by bit I will get there. We went out for dinner with Cannelle's dad, which was good as I though I wasn't going to meet him before the wedding. He was sleeping in his converted Scooby Doo van and we all caught a ride back to Jessica's place. We even managed to persuade her and Cyril that they might fancy joining us for our South East Asia trip. Indeed they are coming to Paris this weekend and we can discuss it. She also owns a rabbit with pooh constantly stuck to its arse. It also goes mental in the middle of the night and had to take a berating from Babou to stop it being too mental.

In the morning we went to Cannelle's uncle's house for lunch and again I was a little bit out of it with the French. We had a nice traditional French meal. We had some home made jam back at Jessicas and tea in a bowl. It seems to be a weird French tradition to drink tea or hot chocolate from a bowl. Maybe its because none of them own mugs. Only tiny glasses. We finished up with some savoury crepes and its not as horrible as it sounds, though I can't say I love it. French food is still my favourite in the World, but a lot of the stuff they eat day to day is not really to my taste. It was a nice weekend down in Bordeaux and we considered it as a place to live if everything didn't go to plan in Paris. Luckily it has gone way better than we expected and we both have good jobs with very good salaries and we are able to take care of everything we need to do for next year. In the morning we went off to the airport and boarded our flight to Milan. The holiday was about to begin :-)