Lost in Bordeaux

After Biarritz, Andrew and I decided to head back to civilization and try out the wines of Bordeaux. The thing was though we arrived on a Sunday afternoon at about 14:00. Now under normal circumstances in any normal NZ town this would be a good thing. But as we have been finding out, lot of towns here in Europe are closed between 12:30 and 15:00. Our first night there we stayed at a 2 star hotel at 4 star prices (for us at least!) but they had free internet and we took advantage to try and find a cheaper place to stay. I found this cute hotel just 2 blocks further and still in the center of town for 52 Euros and it had all the luxuries of the previous hotel. I even managed to drop that we were on our honeymoon and the manager liked that so much that he threw in the breakfast for the first day for free!

We found out that we could rent bicycles from a store nearby and decided to go and see the town by bike. After wanting to do a town tour of Tokyo by bike this was like a dream come true for us. Except, that the weather didn't want to play ball and it started pouring with rain. It would have been cool if we remembered to bring our umbrellas with us that we bought in Rome. Then we could have been doing our "Tokyo-cool" impression with bike handle in one hand and umbrella in the other hand. We ducked into a little cafe and waited for the rain to stop. for the whole 25 mins while we waited I had a freaking nose bleed...so much so that the poor waitress thought there was something seriously wrong with me...(probably thought I had hemophilia!)
Anyway we wizzed around and saw all the beautiful sights along the river and cool old school buildings etc etc....and then it became dark and it was still cool... Andrew wanted to check out some army surplus stores to buy a wicked cool helicopter pilot jacket (that's snorkel jacket for all you in the know) However, by the time he picked out the jacket of his choice we had half an hour to get the bikes back to the store before they closed at 19:30. So off we go! in the dark, in a strange city, with no map, and only a vague inclination of which direction we should be heading in oh and did I mention that its started to rain again?

Left
Left
Right
Up this bit
ummmm maybe we need to head left down this street????
mmmm Right on this one????
awe crap we are.....oh wait! here is that Cathedral that we saw!
I think we should head down here....the total opposite direction of our hotel and get even more lost!!! yay!

In the end, I bullied Andrew to use his meager French to ask two police officers on bikes for directions. One of them looked like Anton Oliver from the All Blacks and the other one was definitely older, shorter but by no means unfit. Also, all police here in Europe walk around with semi-automatic guns at the ready, so they don't seem to invite friendly tourists to come and say "Hi! we're lost!" I would have asked them myself, except all I can say is :oui, non, merci and s'il vous plait oh and bonjour and au revoir
Turns out their English is even worse than my French, but we managed to convey that are lost, can't remember the name of the street we are meant to be going to and that we are from NZ, no not Australia, the one that has the All Blacks...kamate kamate (make haka movements) yeah yeah that's the one! They laugh. This is going well, and they seem to like that we are from NZ. We can tell by the enthusiastic smiles and gestures they make towards us. They look at our bikes and see the name of the shop printed on it. They radio in to the station with the name of the shop and got the address and the street name we need to go to. They started to try and explain how we could get there and then decided that it would be easier just to take us there themselves. They gave us a proper police escort and navigated the streets and evening traffic for us so that we could zoom through the streets with ease. I'm glad they did, because we would have gotten even more lost without them. They were very nice and laughed the whole way. Afterwards, they happily shook our hands and sent us on our way. THAT WAS SOOOOO COOL!
When we told the bike shop that the reason we were there so late was because we got lost they were incredulous. They couldn't believe that we could get lost in Bordeaux. Everything is flat and in a grid layout....I think that was half the problem. We are now used to narrow streets that wind around steep streets that seem to go nowhere.

To top off our biking adventure we went to a restaurant that was two doors down from our hotel and specialised in Cheese. The Menu had French down one side and the English translation down the other side, but I was determined to make my order in French. The waitress was so cute and patiently waited and helped me while I painstakingly struggled to make my order in French. Then when Andrew tried to take the easy option and make his order in English, she told him that I made my order in French and if he really wanted it he will do the same.
Then when she asked us what we would like to drink we were lost all over again. We wanted something from the region, but we weren't sure what that would be. So the Maitre'd came with 3 bottles and explained their qualities and the region that they are from...all of which was lost on us, but we went for the middle one...and it was delicious! tasted like cherries and spices (cinnamon, star anise and cloves) and it got me thoroughly drunk...on one glass. The food was so nice, so rich and made with so much cheese that we had cheese flavored farts for two days!

We were sad to leave Bordeaux, its a beautiful city with very friendly people and we would definitely go back there again.

Next up! Andrew and Adri feel like Mary and Joseph looking for an inn in Nante. Stuff that! We ended up having to stay at a youth hostel. Which was disgusting. It was only 10 Euros cheaper than our hotel in Bordeaux. In Bordeaux we had our own room, with a double bed, a view, bathroom, toilette, towels and a TV(that we didn't even switch on). In Nante we had a dorm room, with single bunk beds, not enough blankets, we had to make our own beds and the toilette stank to high heaven. We went to look for somewhere to eat and went to what we thought was Indian, but turned out to be a Moroccan restaurant. It was beautifully decorated, but the food was disgusting. I wouldn't feed it to a plague ridden rodent even if you paid me.

Andrew asked for a beer. Our owner/waitress/chef offered a choice of "in a can or leffee?" We thought it was a straight forward question for in a can or in a glass. Andrew drank Heineken. We left that town early the next morning to go to Paris.