This past week has been crazy! So much going on. Friday morning, our whole group met at the Gare Montparnasse and boarded the train for Bordeaux! Our train left at 9 and we were supposed to arrive arounnd noon, but unfortunately we had a three hour delay due to an accident on the tracks. We rolled in around 3:30 around much too long on the train.
We dropped our stuff at the hotel and headed out into the city. Bordeaux is absolutely beautiful! We visited the cathedral St. Andre which looks a lot like Paris's Notre Dame but is much more impressive. Kind of unbelievable, I know. It's massive and the architecture is pretty spectacular. Those vaulted ceilings really get me! We wandered down to the river and found this awesome fountain/water floor. Of course we all took our shoes off and ran around in it.
After the river, we stumbled upon a sweet carnival in the middle of the city. After accidently buying 15 rides on the kiddie ride between three of us, we figured out all the good rollar coasters were closed for some reason! Bummer. But there was a huge fountain and statue next to the carnival and it was cool to see the old and the new sides of the city next to each other.
The group split up after that and we went off in search of dinner. I was standing at a map with Annie, one of the girls from the group, and a guy came up and asked up for directions. He was wearing a UW shirt, and it turns out he's studying in Mont Pellier with one of my friends from AHS/UW! Really random to run into someone from home in Bordeaux! Dinner was delicious, avocado and grapefruit salad, and then we went back to the hotel to sleep because we were getting up early the next morning.
After an amazing continental breakfast (the French do breakfast like no other), we got on another train and headed to St. Emilion, a little wine town an hour outside of Bordeaux. Luckily it was a beautiful day, perfect for exploring! As soon as we got off the train there were just fields and fields of grapes as far as the eye could see! The town was adorable, narrow cobblestone streets and that certain small town vibe. We went to a wine tasting and then took a tour of the underground portion of the town. There was MASSIVE underground church dating back to the 11th century. The entire thing was carved out of one huge block of stone and the carvings on the wall were unbelievable. There were zodiac signs on the walls representing the summer and winter solstices and seraphim on the ceiling which makes archeologists think the church used to house relics of Christ. There are at least 200 km of tunnels under the city and three layers of tombs. The church supports a massive bell tower which you can climb and get an amazing view of the town, so the church has been reinforced and braced which just adds to the impression of how old it is. The metal braces looked ridiculously out of place and space-agey compared to the rest of the surroundings.
After exiting the catacombs, we went to the Chateau Guadet St Julien winery. The winery is a family business and we met the whole adorable family who runs it. The winery gets its name from a family who hid in the wine cellars during the French Revolution until they were caught and beheaded. It was an incredible experience; we got the entire wine making process, from the vineyard where the grapes come from to the room where they're processed into wine, and then we got to taste the final process! We also got some winecation (that's education about wine) and so now I feel like i can appreciate wine so much more! We also got to go down into the wine cellar/cave where all the wine is stored and we must have seen thousands of bottles of wine from different years. Our guide explained to us that wine is like people. When the wine is young it has a lot up front, a lot to show but not really anything to back it up. Then, after the wine ages, it doesn't have as much to show but it has a lot of say. This added to the experience of tasting different aged wines, especially he showed us how to hold wine glasses and swirl our wine and air it out to maximize smell and flavor.
We finally headed home from St. Emilion that evening, and I was so sad to leave the city! But the next morning we were getting up to head to Europe's largest sand dune!
When we awakened, it was pouring rain, but Sarah, Danika, Raymond, and I still decided to make the trek out to the dune. It was another hour on the train but it was a pretty ride. The rain had slackened a lot when we arrived and we stopped for some frites before we headed to the dune. The dune is 117 m high and of course we decided to climb the side, not take the stairs. The view from the top is amazing, 3 km of sand dune, pine forest, and the Atlantic Ocean. We ran down the other side of the dune and took a quick dip in the Atlantic. Even though it was raining the water was warm, and we were so happy to be swimming! When we got out we climbed back up and down the dune and grabbed a crepe before we caught our train back to Bordeaux. The train was an hour late, we had bad train luck this trip! But we made it home safely.
On Monday, Charli arrived in Paris! She came with two of the girls she lives with in Ireland and we ventured ALL around Paris! We saw most of the most famous monuments. I might have tired the girls out with all the walking, but it was worth it! It was really surreal hanging out with someone from home in France.
