Bordeaux, France

After 3 days in Portugal, it was time to catch our 7am flight to France. Thankfully, we didn't have to sleep in the airport, like we originally planned, but we did have to catch the trembling tram at 4am :/

We got to Bordeaux pretty early in the morning and found our way to the hotel, surprisingly without any problems! This is the first time I've visited a country where I don't speak the language at least a little bit, so I experienced my first language culture shock!

Drew's mom let us use her frequent buyer points at a Holiday Inn in Bordeaux, since it was impossible to find a hostel in this city. It seemed like more of an older and less touristy area that was more traditional, so if there WERE hostels, they were probably hard to find anyway!

After many nights of sleeping on airport floors and tiny broken beds, this California king size bed with air-conditioning made us feel like royalty :)

After we cleaned off and rested for a bit, we took at look at the map and picked a random spot to take the train to explore around a bit! We were right on the shore of the river and there was a little beer/wine/tapas event going on in the streets (VERY expensive). We walked around in tha and went to the market to get something to eat. We stumbled upon a little tourism center and found a bus that would take us around the main sites to see in Bordeaux for pretty cheap, so we hopped on that to see some cool buildings.

I love old cathedrals!

After the bus tour was done, we decided to go walk along the river, because there seemed to be a lot going on over there, and it was actually really pretty!!

There were little gardens all along the walk down the river and people would hang out an lay in between the different plants to relax.

This is a "pond" that is two centimeters deep where people can cool off a little on a hot day without getting completely wet. The water comes up through the cracks on the bottom and occasionally, fountains turn on so the kids can play in it. It was actually really cool! We need more things like this back at home.

After our bus tour, we somehow discovered that it came with a free wine tasting. So we walked into this fancy little winery and got tastes of some nice French red and white wines. Which is just what we wanted to do in Bordeaux!

Crêpes and wine at a cafe on the boardwalk along the river. Mmmm! :)

Our second day in Bordeaux was not nearly as pleasant as our first day. We had to switch hotels because the frequent points were only good for one night at the Holiday Inn :( So we took a BUNCH of pictures of google maps and hopped on a train to go to the complete opposite end of Bordeaux. When we got off the train, it was a ghost town. No one was outside and not many shops were open, but it was a nice part of town. The map mislead us to the wrong area and we got lost for quite a while. After walking around for a bit, we saw an old yellow and pink sign which we thought said "Quik Palace" (the name of our hotel..nice huh?). Turned out it WAS our hotel, but reception was closed until 5pm-8pm. It was an automated hotel where you can pay with your credit card outside and get a password for a room and the main lobby, so ideally, you don't need a receptionist. Unfortunately, this didn't work very well for our American credit/debit cards, so we had to wait 2.5 hours until 5 for the hotel keeper to come. So we ended up missing our tour of the wine museum :( 

After a little while, someone came out of the hotel so we were able to hang out inside the lobby for most of the time and watch South Park on my iPad, and the man even came early!

After a pretty angry afternoon, we decided to reverse our day and go see some Bordeaux night light for our last night here. We could finally stay out late on one of our last nights because our flight wasn't until noon the next day!

We went to a little mom and pop shop and got some pizza and paella (interesting combination) and explored the town!

This is what the front of the tram controls looks like! All it is is a little switch that moves from green to yellow to red to make that tram carry all those people!

This is what they carry in their French pharmacies?

The next morning we slept in, FINALLY, and stumbled our way to the airport...it was a very close call to make the flight because we lost track of time, but we ended up making it with perfect amount of time.

But let me just say: RyanAir SUCKS! And I will never use it by choice ever again! Horrible service, horrible pilot...but it still got us to our destination for cheap! :)

What we lived off of for 12 days! Amateur backpackers ;)