Bordeaux: sometimes God just wants you to drink wine

Back the other week when it came time to look for and book our Bordeaux hostel, a small problem began to emerge.  Apparently finding an affordable hostel in Bordeaux (that's not 45 minutes out of town) is not the easiest task to accomplish.  HostelWorld totally failed us for the first time ever.  But my guidebook recommended a small budget hotel, so I emailed them and waited for a reply.  As the time until Bordeaux grew shorter and shorter, I began looking with increased desperation and found a youth hostel that wasn't on HostelWorld.  They had availability, but I wasn't able to confirm that they didn't have an age cap, because sadly Eve and I are no longer exactly youths.  I did more googling and found housetrip.com, a site that facilitates the temporary rental of private apartments.  I found one I thought looked good, in the center, with a balcony!  I was nervous about using a brand-new site but felt we were running out of options and didn't want us to be left with nothing.  So I booked it.  And with housetrip, once you click "Confirm Booking", they go ahead and take ALL the payment.  And their cancellation policy blows.  We were, basically, committed.

So Eve and I went out to enjoy our amazing day on Chateau d'If and Pomègues, and come home to find that BOTH the youth hostel and the budget hotel have finally gotten back to me.  In just a few hours, we'd gone from nowhere to stay to triple booked.  Of all these, the apartment was both the most expensive and (to my mind) the sketchiest, so I was extremely pissed at myself for not waiting just a little bit longer.  But housetrip had my money so the apartment was going to be it.

Eve spent a lot of time over the next couple of days reassuring me that everything was going to be fine.  Which was a bit of a role-reversal.

It's a six-hour train ride from Marseille to Bordeaux, so we got up at 6:15 in order to make our 8:15 train.  All went smooth though, luckily.  We were able to navigate the tram from the station to the center with no problem, and found the address where the apartment was.  Only... our host was nowhere to be found, and without wireless, we had no way to reach her.  Bummer and balls.

So off I went to see if I could pirate some free French wireless while Eve stayed put in case our host showed up.  I actually was able to find wireless pretty quickly, and headed back to give Eve the good news and bad news I'd just read in our host's latest email.  But lo and behold, when I rounded the corner, there was Eve standing and chatting with a very pretty French lady, who in fact was our host.  Hallelujah!

Our host's apartment was amazing.  Tiny adorable studio, with a long balcony that ran the entire length of the apartment.  Our host gave us the keys and left us, wishing us a pleasant stay.  I just absolutely love it when things work out.

Only picture I took inside unfortunately, with our stuff everywhere and my laundry handing all shantytown.

Eve took a nap, I did laundry.  (See above.)  It was really quite wonderful to be able to have our space and  privacy for these last few days in France!  For dinner I convinced Eve to try a Turkish place because I was so very, very tired of baguettes.  It turned out to be great.  Yummy food and a very entertaining waiter.  We got hummus as an app!  Our pitcher of white house wine was the pits though.  Eve said it tasted like mayonnaise to her!!  Yucks.

So happy to not be eating another baguette sandwich

The next day was our only full day in Bordeaux and also our last day in France together.  So sad.  Strictly impossible that three weeks could be over so quickly.  We started the day with coffee and chocolate croissants and then hit the town to get our fill of museums and churches.

I really wanted to see this Contemporary Art Museum that had been highly recommended by my guidebook.  So we walked a ways up the river and found it... but it was closed!!! :(  So disappointed.  Next we decided that we'd finally try to rent bicycles, something we'd both wanted to do since Paris.  We found a bike rental stand, but our American credit cards don't have chips in them (this has been a huge inconvenient problem when it comes to buying train tickets), and the machine couldn't read the card.  So no bikes for us.  The day was not shaping up to be our best yet, so far.

We checked out the public gardens, because they at least were open.

Then it was seriously time for lunch.  We were planning on doing a Room Picnic on our balcony for dinner, so this would be the last meal we'd eat in France together.  I really wanted to get more mussels since they were so good last time, so we wandered around for a good while before finding a restaurant that served them.  The very second we sat down outside, it began to rain!!! I mean, of course it did.  We took shelter inside and watched our waiter go around to every other table before he finally came around to us.  I ordered my mussels and was informed "Mussels finished."  I mean, of course they were.  We tried to just order a glass of wine and then go find food elsewhere, but were then very coldly told "We are not a bar.  It is not possible just to drink, no food."  We left, and I didn't even say "Merci" on our way out the door.

But the very next restaurant down the road also had  mussels, and we could sit outside again since it was under cover.  (The rain had stopped by then anyway.)  Our waitress at the new restaurant was ever so much nicer, and we ordered a salads, a big pot of mussels to share, and a bottle of wine.  Splurging a little for our last meal!!

Our moods slowly lifted as we sipped our not-mayonnaise wine and ate these incredible salads.  Day was looking up.  Then our mussels came.  They looked and smelled amazing.

... But my very first mussel had something unexpected and hard inside... I spit it out, and it was a tiny crab!  Little gross, but no big deal.  I named him Pierre and put him on the table to keep us company for the rest of the meal.

But then we found a crab in another mussel... and another, and another.  Fully two-thirds of our mussels had these little crabs inside, in various stages of being hoovered up by the mussel before its untimely boiled end.

We tried to be brave eaters and good sports, but the fact is that it was seriously pretty gross.  One or two would have been fine, but so many of them just made it impossible to enjoy the meal.  We did not finish our pot of crab mussels.

Will probably never eat mussels again.

We told our waitress, but she just sort of shrugged.  Ah, French Service.  Oh well.  We ordered a dessert to share and a second bottle of wine.  For our nerves.  Seriously people, this was one of the ickier meals I've had, and I spent 13 months in Georgia.

Well, safe to say that neither of us will ever forget our last meal out together in France!!!

The day was getting on and we really hadn't done much sightseeing, so we walked down to check out Saint Andre Cathedral.  Very gothic and cool looking.

Then I wanted to go to the Musee d'Aquitaine, that had artifacts from the region dating back to prehistoric times.  Eve had on her brave patient face when I suggested this, and when I asked her to rate her desire to see the museum on a scale of one to ten, she smiled and said "Zero."  So, we did not go.  No way I was going to force my sister to do something else unenjoyable on one of her last days in France.

Instead, we walked around a little, found a bakery that sold macarons, and then took a seat outside a cute little wine bar overlooking a busy square.  And had ourselves another bottle of wine while we ate our second dessert of the day. :)

SO much better than a museum.

Then we just went ahead with our plans for the evening and headed home, stopping at a market for necessary supplies such as cheese, charcuterie, bread, pistachios, fruit, and more wine.  Sat outside on our very own little balcony, listened to music on my iPhone, and watched Bordeaux pass by.

View from our balcony

And that, my friends, was Eve's and my final day in France together.  No museums (and only a couple churches), but a lot of laughter and a lot of truly unforgettable memories.  So grateful I got to have this time with my sister and share this incredible country with her.  I think we created more inside jokes and crazy insane moments between us this past three weeks than in the past five years!

"Grandma is here with the potots."

Miss you Evie!  Already can't wait until the next time.  You are Le Awesome.

Marseille: beaches, hiking, and couches

So when I blogged about Nice, I forgot to mention the every random and fun evening we had with Maxim, from the Ukraine.  We met him in the water during our last swim and then shared the last of our wine with him.  He repaid us by taking us out to dinner at a lovely outdoor cafe -- salads and white wine.  Perfect after a day on the beach!

After we said goodnight to Maxim, we went home to change out of our still-wet suits and then stopped into another bar for a bit.  Fantastic night after a fantastic day in Nice.

So, after the epic stressful adventure to get from Chamonix to Nice, our wee little ride from Nice to Marseille was so easy it was like it never even happened.  Rode along the Mediterranean coast for a while, so doubtless had the prettiest train ride thus far.

Once again, our walk from the train station to our hostel in Marseille, Vertigo Vieux Port, was (much) longer than we thought it had any right to be, but never were we actually lost.  And Vertigo was the shizz.  After Baccarat, it was quite literally amazing, with its clean quiet rooms, helpful friendly staff, bright kitchen, and accessible wireless.  Our four-bed room did not even have bunk beds!  We instantly loved it, and even decided to stay an extra night.

After checking in, we asked the desk staff about a beach nearby, because there wasn't one on the map within reasonable walking distance.  But she showed us the way to a small city beach maybe 20 minutes away.  We picked up a quick meal-on-the-go on the way and soon once again found ourselves stretched out, gazing at the Mediterranean Sea.  In the distance we could see the infamous Chateau d'If!

The water here was much too cold to swim for some reason unfortunately, but as always on a French beach there is no shortage of people-watching.  We just hung out and chatted and eventually decided to stay and watch the sun set.  Utterly beautiful.

My sister was not taking the sunset seriously.  At all.

Dinner that night was at a nice place right on the port.  We shared a salmon burger and mussels mariniere, which was something I'd wanted to get since first getting to France!

See how the supersalty Mediterranean did wonders to heal my forehead?

The next day turned out to be one of my favorites so far.  We took a ferry ride out to the Chateau d'If and the Frioul Islands.  The weather was perfect, if a little (a whole lot) windy!

Pretty Marseille

Chateau d'If.  We looked for ghosts.

The Chateau is a lot smaller than I was given to believe from its literary/movie depictions.  We weren't able to go below ground at all though.  All the truly scary-looking cells are likely not for our casual tourist eyes.

After the Chateau, we got back on the ferry for the short ride over to the two main Frioul Islands.  I didn't know the first thing about these islands but our hostel person recommended giving them a visit.  The two islands are connected by a man-made strait thingy.  We wandered down from the port and at random decided to go towards the southern island, Pomègues.

These islands were so much fun to explore.  They are all almost completely desert -- white limestone in various degrees of cliffs and loose gravel.  The main path is set high above the water, but there are dozens of thin tracks leading down to sheltered little coves and even a couple beaches.  Utterly breathtaking, and so much fun!

About to do a quite unexpected hike in a sundress and Sperry's

They could have filmed Jesus Christ Superstar here.

Chameleon (bright pink bag notwithstanding)

Picture-perfect pirate cove!!

As we got to the far end of the island, we came on this random reconstructed fortress.

YOU CANNOT PASS!

A little further on, we started seeing all these awesome ruins and remnants left over from World War II.  It was very eerie coming up unexpectedly on these random ruins and just be able to pick our way through completely unhindered.  There are probably some ghosts out here too.

Caveaux Battery Ruins.  Utterly creepy.  Loved it

The walk back to port didn't take as long as we thought it would, and we decided to get dinner at one of the restaurants on the island before catching the ferry home.  Sadly this was a terrible choice.  Our food was not the greatest.  I ordered fried calamari and it looked (and tasted) like it had sat frozen in a bag for three months.  (It kind of upset my stomach all the next day, too.)  But oh well.  One thing about France, if nothing else I could always count on the company being excellent.

The next day was our extra day in Marseille.  We went out to buy our train tickets for the next leg of our journey, had a crummy lunch at a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop, made a halfhearted attempt to find a church, got lost, and decided that what we really wanted to do was absolutely nothing.  We went back to the hostel and just hung out on the couch in the common area for the rest of the afternoon and evening, eating our snacks we'd picked up at the market, reading and catching up on computer stuff.  It was nice to have a day off, honestly, and we did need to make it an early night because we were going to have to get up at 6:00 in the morning to catch our train to Bordeaux...

A Nice Break (because puns are the highest form of humor)

The travel day between Chamonix and Nice (door-to-door, 14 hours) was by no means the longest travel day I've ever had, and I have no doubt that I'll have a (much) longer one again soon, but nonetheless, a long walk with our packs followed by four separate trains, ending in what unfortunately was the worst hostel we've encountered so far, was not one of my most favorite days ever.

Our directions to the hostel were the vaguest yet, and Evie unfortunately took a tumble-with-pack outside the station, which was made ever so much more hilarious my my crouching down to help her and then not being able to get up again myself.  Like two giant beached turtles.  I don't know if that ever even happens, but the mental image you undoubtedly have right now is correct.


Hotel Baccarat in Nice is deliciously close to the train station, which is stupendous after a 14-hour travel day, and it's about a 20-minute walk to the beach.  That's about all it has to recommend it.  Our 8-bunk room had no windows, was terribly hot and stuffy, and we found our first cockroach of the trip dead in the bathroom.  Arriving at about 11:00 at night, we were not exactly blown away with joy.

With all my sink-washed undies proudly on display.

The next day, after of course both sleeping horribly, we woke up for our day of touring Nice.  Museums and churches.  Woo.  But first we walked down and took a look at the Mediterranean.  Nice's beach is pebbly, so that's not the greatest for bare feet.  The morning started out cloudy, but slowly the clouds burned away and we walked on the beach a while, collecting bits of sea glass and taking pictures.

YAY!  Church 463!

Anyone else note how the American flag is not quite asked to be in the cool group?

And then I just sort of suggested that we skip all the museums and churches and go back to the hostel for our bathing suits before spending the rest of the day on the beach.  Eve looked about the happiest I'd seen her in 48 hours.

Round-trip to the hostel and back, including a stop for snacks and drinks and another to buy these bamboo mat things, took under an hour and a half.  And by 1:30 we were sunscreened up and stretched out next to the Mediterranean Sea.

Of course, our afternoon was not entirely without excitement, because (after several hours of repeated trying), I managed to convince Eve that we should go parasailing.

Only a little bit out-of-my-mind happy.

This has to be, hands-down, one of the awesomest things I have ever done.  I actually think it even beats out parachuting, which I did (tandem) for my 30th birthday.  Parasailing was just so effortless.  We walked forward on the beach until our harness lifted us up and then we sat in these comfy little swings for the duration of our ride.  We got a truly stellar view of Nice, got gently dunked in the water twice, and after seven or eight too-short minutes, the boat landed us in the water near the shore.  Utterly.  Loved.  This.

Then it was just back out to our mats.  We swam, snacked, Eve napped, I people-watched, and towards the end of the afternoon we shared a bottle of white wine.

Spending the afternoon on the Mediterranean was incredible.  I got to fly, swim, and rest.  Amazing, and exactly what we needed to wind down a little from our crazy self-imposed madness.