Dec 23 - Bordeaux

I took the train Bordeaux. I did not have an assigned seat and there was confusion for about 30 minutes after I boarded the train with people claiming their assigned seats. I was fortunate to find a seat as the train was very full. Between the "greves" (French strikes) shutting down some of the trains and the naturally high volume of travel around Christmas, the train was packed. I sat beside an older (I must be careful with this pejorative term, but I would guess she was between 55 and 60) woman and managed to hold my own talking to her. I was a bit tired after 90 minutes of chatting, but it was a kick to communicate with a local.

Bordeaux

I checked into my hotel near the train station, took a short rest (or perhaps I logged into Facebook and threw a few pillows and snowballs at various friends, I forget now). Before long, I took the Bordeaux light rail downtown to meet Tanja, a German friend of Hanna, my housemate from Toulouse. Tanja had graciously agreed to show me around Bordeaux. She was attending French school in Bordeaux, much as I was in Toulouse, except that she had four months to study.

We spent several hours wandering the streets of Bordeaux, and gradually made our way to the waterfront (Garonne River - same as Toulouse, except being close to the Atlantic, it was larger in Bordeaux) by nightfall. The light was not great but it was good enough to get a good view of the "Mirror de Bordeaux", something for which the city is famous. There is an area 40m x 60m covered with flat black granite blocks, each having several small holes in it. Water flows up through the holes, to form a very thin layer on the surface. This acts as an almost perfect reflector, and the view of the government buildings opposite were just beautiful, especially as the sun was setting and the resulting deep blue of the sky was visible.

There is a much longer bridge here in Bordeaux than in Toulouse, although they don't have the fancy lighting here, using only standard bulbs instead of the multicolors in Toulouse. Tanja liked the lit up bridge here better than Pont Neuf in Toulouse while I prefer the Pont Neuf.

Like all French cities, there are lots of churches in Bordeaux. I got some photos of one of the ugliest churches I have ever seen. It looks like something out of Lord of the Rings, with thin, ornate, flying buttresses. Yukko.

I picked up a few bottles of Bordeaux at the local grocery store, taking them with me on the train to Paris. I figured Jamie and I would find a way to drink them during our "Tour de France". It turns out that we drank almost all of the bottles, thereby reducing the weight of my bag.