Bordeaux

Bordeaux was originally planned to be a one night wonder before we jetted up to Stockholm. Fortunately plans changed and we stayed for two - Bordeaux was brilliant!


Planning paid off and our idea to ring and book at the youth hostel meant we got into one of the most popular places in town - it was completely full the whole time we were there. It was excellent having a kitchen again too, so we filled ourselves to the brim with pasta and loaded up on the free breakfast (well...included in the price) each morning.


But enough about food.


Bordeaux city has undergone extensive renovations in recent years and is currently bidding to become the European capital of culture for 2013 - they´ve got our vote! The city has a flash new tram system (which we avoided due to previous negative connotations from Nice) and the longest pedestrian shopping strip in France - 1.2km of pure temptation. The buildings were just beautiful and the water sculpture right on the river front which is basically where the pavement comes to life and starts squirting and spraying water at everyone. It was heaps of fun - the rest of Bordeaux thought so it seemed too, the place was packed! Although that is also explained by the fact we are right in the middle of high season...no more cheap and available all the time accommodation that's for sure.


No trip to Bordeaux would be complete without heading out into the surrounding area to check out some vineyards. Eschewing the kind offer of a 90 euro/pp guided tour, we got out the trusty Eurail pass and headed out to St Emilion, where there is something like one wine shop for every eight inhabitants. It was full of windy, cobbled streets and had great views out over the vines. We weren't really in the market for a St Emilion grand cru or anything like that (any single thing that costs over a day's budget is a bit out of our price range), but we did get into the swing of the wine tastings. The wine is about 70% merlot in that region, so it wasn't really something you can drink too much of on an empty stomach! We rounded off the day with a visit to St Emilion's underground passageways, catacombes and vast church.


Our last day in France saw us head off to the Dune de Pilat - the largest sand dune in Europe. It was 2.5km long, 500m wide and 117m high - and growing! It sure felt that high when you were climbing back up it, but it was definitely worth that (and all the sand in your knickers) to give it a good roly-poly down!! A short swim off the Atlantic Coast later and it was off to the airport to say 'hej!' to Stockholm.

Lourdes

From a religious festival to one of the most religious places, some may have thought we were on a pilgrimage ourselves. We had already seen the Pope and tonnes of churches. Our arrival in Lourdes was met with some of the heaviest rain we had seen since Turkey, so plans had to change. We got a cheap room and had to forgo the campsite, but proceeded to sleep for the next 14 hours. It is dificult to beat a good sleep, and that was a great sleep.

The blue sky to which we had become accustomed woke us up the next day and we started our own little pilgrimage around Lourdes. This year is the 150 year anniversariy of the apparitions of Our Lady to Saint Bernadette, so the town was decked out and they have placed a trail around town for you to follow important places in Bernadette´s life. The fountain she was baptised in, her house, the cave where the apparitions occurred and the oratory where she recieved her first communion.

We jumped on board the trail, but what we were struck by was the number of elderly and ill that were also on the trail. Many were in trollies being pulled around by nurses, friends, family, or Scouts. Most the sights are unimpressive except for the Grotto, which has a massive church built above it, and has thousands of candles that have been left burning as offerings.

Every day they have a procession of the pilgrimages and a torchlight procession, which ends up in the Church of St Pious X, a massive underground church that can hold up to 25,000. No, the ´0´ key has not got stuck. It was huge!!!

There is also a fountain where you can fill your container with water from the grotto. It tastes nice, but we did come down with a cold a couple of days later, so we can´t vouch for its healing powers.

The next day the Tour de France pulled into town. After a fair amount of time scoping out just the right posy, just after a corner so they have slowed down, with a long view afterwards, we staked our claim, pulled out cushion and waited two hours for the caravan to arrive.

The caravan is all the sponsors of the Tour, who dress up their cars and throw free stuff to the crowd. We were in the mood for some free stuff and our position did us well. We walked away with: three hats, a bag, 2 bottles of water, 2 packets of lollies, a packet of salami, 2 keyrings, a lanyard, a sunglasses cleaner thing, a couple of french newspapers, and some blowhorns. Most of which was swapped out for an impressive Skoda hat which has the date and stage on it. Well worth the trade.

We then sat and waited for another hour for the cyclists to come through and then twenty seconds after that we went home... All and all a nice day in the sun. The locals gave something to watch and we have a nice selection of hats.



That day happened to be Bastille Day and the town was putting on a pyro-symphony, that is, fireworks to music. Now we are becoming quite the connoisseur of fireworks and this was the first time in Europe that they had played music with the big booms, which was nice as it had come up on our score sheets a couple of times. It was one of the best displays we have seen!!

After a hard day of sitting around watching things, it was off to sleep to get up early for our train to Bordeaux.

Pamplona!!

Bulls, alcohol, red scarfs, alcohol, red neckties, alcohol, white clothes, alcohol - this basically sums up the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, more commonly known as the Running of the Bulls. I had thought that it would mainly be centered around the bull run, with some other stuff on the side, but the bull run could be seen as an event on the side - there is just so much going on every second of the day!

We had planned to get to Pamplona by train at about 1am on the 10th of July, rest in a park, and then get up early for the bull run the following day. However, while eating dinner in Hendaye on the French side of the border we saw a bus that looked like it was heading to Pamplona at about 7pm - racing over we chucked our bags in the boot, paid the much cheaper fare, and got to Pamplona just under two hours later in time for all the fun! Left luggage was a ridiculously cheap 3.50€ so we partied for a while, getting all kitted up with the right gears (check out the photos here), until we found a cosy possie in the park for a few hours sleep.

They had said that to get a good viewing position you needed to be there about two hours in advance - pish we thought - but they were right. I still managed to get some good photos through other people´s legs though! Adrian will ball you up in the corner when you next see him with his version of the run...

That night we headed out to Estella ("Stella!!! Stella!!!") to our campsite we had reserved literally months in advance thinking that any and all accommodation would be completely booked out. What we hadn´t realised was exactly how far 45km out of the city was... But it had a great pool and we relaxed heartily in preparation for day two of our San Fermin adventure the following day.

Back in the city we checked out some more fireworks (video to come), followed some more marching bands, walked through some markets, and (best of all) went to the fun fair! Dodgems and candy floss are such a good combination...

We had planned on doing the whole sleeping out thing again, and I was a bit concerned about the fact it had started to rain, but then we met some locals and the whole night changed. Oscar, Vanessa and Benjamin were Pamplona locals who had never done the bull run ("much, much too dangerous"! They obviously only considered ´really´doing it if you were practically guaranteed a hospital stay), but went out religiously every night to paaaaaar-tay! They were heaps of fun, so friendly, and took us to the most crowded locals bars (known as penas) you could ever imagine. They also showed us the local´s drink: red wine and coca cola...go on, give it a nudge!

We ended up staying out all night and because we couldn´t find a spot to watch the run the following day, Adrian convinced me to actually run it... We arrived so far in front of the bulls into the ring we got booed. So no, not close to the action at all! (And wouldn´t probably go so far as to say I ´ran´ it either...)

So after all the excitement we got our weary bodies onto a bus and headed back to France. We are clearly getting old because that one night of missed sleep meant we went to bed at 4pm that next day and didn´t wake up until about 9am... Ok, Adrian has just informed me that it was actually more like 30 hours without sleep so maybe we can keep our reputations intact, just this time though.

Provence

Provence, land of sunflowers, English retirees on a year´s adventure, more Roman ampitheatres than you can shake a stick at, and of course, us on holiday.

Provence was also the home of day one of use of our ridiculously expensive Eurail pass - the saga to break even on it is ongoing as I write, wish us luck... But, day one got us from Nice to Nimes, via Marseilles. We originally had grand plans of going to Nimes to drop off our stuff before heading back to Marseilles, but considering the train went through Marseilles, we were lucky enough that left luggage facilities still existed at the train station (post Sept 11 a lot of the left luggage facilities in French rail stations were closed down, only the major stations still keep them. The Marseilles facility had some pretty hard core scanning systems as well).

We decided to go as touristy as possible in Marseilles, mainly due to the fact we decided to get a ´Marseilles Card´ and so wanted to make the most out of our money as possible! It also included a ´petit train´ which is something that all self respecting tourists visiting France have to do at least once on their travels! The train got us up to the Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde, high up on the hill overlooking Marseilles, and protecting the city from all manner of baddies. The inside of the basilica is covered with tiles thanking Mary for saving their lives etc., as are the walls outside.

After tootling back down we got on the ferry out to l´ile d´If, the setting for a part of the story of the Count of Monte Cristo. It houses the citadel which was where several political prisoners were housed, as well as (albeit briefly) a rhinoceros.

Marseilles ended with the greasiest kebab so far, and a 3km hike through town and up the hill to the hostel in Nimes - one of the few that had a campsite and a kitchen (heaven in our eyes...).

The following day we headed to the Gard river for a kayak excursion, and a chance to finally test out the underwater capabilities of Adrian´s new camera. The Gard river is, you guessed it, the setting for the Pont de Gard, an impressive Roman aquaduct 275m long and 49m high.

It was heaps of fun to get out in the sun and kayak down the river, including some jumps down off some (very) large boulders into the river. It made for some deep sleep that night as well as some tired backs and arms the following day!

But, as hardened travellers, we decided to fit in a day trip for our last day in Provence - the Camargue, here we come! The Camargue is a huge area on the coast of Provence and is the delta for the Rhone River. We went looking for pink flamingos and came up with salt pans instead. It was a long and somewhat fruitless day, made even more exasperating by the fact we had been given the wrong bus timetable to get back into Nimes that night - meaning that we missed our night train and to even get back to our hostel had to go an hour and a half in the wrong direction in order to eventually get home that night... Argh!!!! But Andy, the fantastic owner of the hostel, and (gigantic) pig George made it all better by giving us free dinner and a glass of wine - the Nimes YHA definitely makes the cut for favourite hostels now!

The next day, finally, we were off to Pamplona...

The French Riviera

Continuing our grand tour of the Mediterranean Coast, we arrived in Nice, which unfortunately, turned out to be not so nice after all... It is a subject that we are not to speak of, but I think I am allowed to share that it involved the new tram system and a 20€ fine each. After that, we pretty much avoided Nice centrale...

Our ferry had arrived a bit later than anticipated, and the bus to our campsite at Cagnes-sur-Mer took forever, so we arrived closer to midnight than one would have liked, but it would have been much later than it would have been apart from the exceptional kindness of a couple of locals who saw us looking in bewilderment at the map and who drove us up to our campsite. And who said the French are unfriendly?!

Day one back on the mainland saw us heading to Grasse, the undisputed French capital of perfumery (obviously this day trip was Amelia´s idea). It´s up in the hills behind the coast and surrounded by fields of flowers, although we stuck to the centre of town. They have a lot of perfume factories offering free tours (aka, pre-shopping propoganda) such as Fragonard where we were so kind as to exchange some of our hard earned euros for some smelly water. It was only after we left the shop that we remembered the 10% off voucher in our pocket...

After Grasse we hopped back on the bus to Cannes to mix with the beautiful people. With our new fragrances we fitted right in...

The following day Amelia went to Monaco to get a stamp in her passport, watch the changing of the guards and admire the flash cars outside the casino. The afternoon was spent at the Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary chapel created by Matisse in Vence and at the Maeght Foundation which is a private art museum and garden in the hills of Provence. Adrian had already spent time in Monaco so went to the Nice modern art museum, for a swim at Cap-d´Ail, and strolled along the Promenade des Anglais. We are clearly becoming very cultured and interesting people...