Biking in Bordeaux

A view of the French countryside as seen through the train window.
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While staying in Toulouse my friend and I decided to take a day trip to a near by city so we decided to take the train to Bordeaux. Sarah's friend James came to visit for a day and was heading to Bordeaux next at the same time we were planning on going, so we all took the train together.

We woke up impossibly earlier on Sunday morning after having stayed up well past midnight that night, doing what? Why watching more x-files of course! lol. So we were of course really tired and ruining late. And as is the typical traveler's cliche we ended up missing the train we had been planning on taking, so we had to take a slightly later train. This ended up being a good thing as in our rush to leave Sarah's apartment we hadn't actually had time to eat anything so we were able to sit and eat a breakfast of cheese sandwiches (being that all three of us are vegetarians we inevitably ate a lot of cheese sandwiches) at the train station. When the train arrived and it was time to depart we headed over to the platform and as we were trying to get the vending machine to give us a soda, we realized that Sarah had left our tickets at the table we were sitting at. Which was really to be expected when leaving Sarah in charge of something like that. So Sarah frantically ran back inside the train station to our table and got there just as the man was about to start clearing up. She grabbed the tickets and made it back to us just in the nick of time. Phew! We nearly missed our train for the second time that morning! After that it was my responsibility to hold onto our tickets, which really I should have been doing in the first place.

as we were trying to get the vending machine to give us a soda, we realized that Sarah had left our tickets at the table we were sitting at.

Sarah biking in the middle of some unknown street.
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It was a two and a half hour train ride to Bordeaux, during which I forced Sarah to study for her Hebrew final which she would be taking the following afternoon. I read a book while James wrote a bunch of postcards, and in what felt like no time at all we had arrived in Bordeaux (after having passed a lot of the beautiful French countryside might I add). James had a friend who was studying abroad in Bordeaux (which was why he was going there in the first place) so she met us at the train station and took us back to her apartment where she had graciously agreed to let us all spend the night on her floor. We dropped off our stuff there and met her roommate and then headed out to get some more cheese sandwiches somewhere.

The cool reflection pool thing.
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As it was Sunday however there weren't too many places open as most places are closed on Sunday in France. We managed to find a place that had setting outside in the sun and decided to eat there. After which we had agreed that we were going to find a place to rent bikes from so that we could bike around the city. Bordeaux is known for being a great city to bike or roller blade around because it's really flat and they have a lot of rental places. We headed back towards the main shopping center where the stores were actually open because of the Soldes, otherwise they would have been closed. I got the impression the the Soldes (sales) in France at this time of the year are a fairly big deal. Big enough at least to keep the stores open on a Sunday! From there we made our way to the tourist information center where they gave us a list of places we could rent bikes from and managed to find one that was actually open. We walked to the place and rented bikes for what seemed like far too much at about 8 euros for only four hours. (Some places are a euro a day!) But since it was the only time Sarah and I were going to be in Bordeaux we paid up and hopped on the bikes.

The lion statue we came across.
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Biking around the city was amazing. It was a nice sunny afternoon with a great breeze so it wasn't too hot or too cold. We got to see a lot of the city this way, and it was a total rush biking through traffic and avoiding people. We found a bunch a cool little sights that we probably would never have found otherwise, like this crazy big blue lion statue, can you say Aslan? And also this really big cool reflection pool type thing. It was really pretty, and it was shallow so you were allowed to walk on it, it almost looked as though you were walking on water. Way cool. We didn't actually have a map or anything, and we didn't know our way around, or where we were going. We simply made it up as we biked around taking turns leading to where ever we felt like. After about three hours we were getting tired and stopped to get a drink, deciding that afterwards we would try to find our way back to the bike rental place because by this point it was dark out. Then as we were sitting there I looked up the street and saw these trees that had Christmas lights in them, very similar to the trees with lights that I had taken a picture of earlier that day by the place where we had lunch. Then amazingly it turned out that they were the same trees! We had some how found our way back to where we needed to be without even realizing it. We had thought we were probably way far away. So after our drinks we headed back and returned our bikes a little early.

The tickets we very nearly lost.
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Afterwards we went back to James' friend's apartment totally exhausted and also very hungry. She took us out to a place where we could get dinner. The food was really good but it felt like the longest dinner of my life because I was so tired. Plus meals in France are naturally long.  After dinner we went back to her  apartment and crashed. The next morning we woke up early (again, ugh!) and made our way back to the train station. This time we had no problem catching our train and got back in Toulouse on time.

Bordeaux was a really nice little side trip, it gave me something to compare Toulouse to (apart from Paris). Bordeaux definitely has its own thing going, it was a lot different from Toulouse. Just looking at it I could see the a big difference, but it was also beautiful and biking around was great.