For the 3 day Eid holiday, we headed off to Bordeaux, France to do a little wine tasting, enjoy some fall weather and relax. The trip would be considered long by our old standards, but when a trip home now takes around 20 hours, a mere 9 to get to Bordeaux doesn't seem too bad.
We left just before midnight to catch our 1:40am flight to Paris from Abu Dhabi. We both had a nap before heading out and got a fair amount of sleep on the flight over. Air France is fairly nice, especially the food, but the seats aren't that comfortable (not like Etihad! :) Luckily, most of the passengers wanted to sleep since we were due to arrive in Paris at 6am so the flight was quiet and restful.
We arrived in Paris, Charles du Gualle, got our luggage and headed off to the TGV - the high speed train that can take you all over France and many parts of Europe. While our French is a bit rusty, we managed just fine and settled in for the 4 hour train ride to Bordeaux - more sleep in seats that were much more comfortable than the plane.
We got to Bordeaux, St. Jean station just before noon and were met by our Wine Tour Guide Pierre-Jean and whisked off to our hotel, a nice little Best Western in the heart of town. We had about an hour to rest and find some lunch before heading out on our first wine tour of the trip. And since we were both starving, we resisted the rest and headed off to find lunch.
Lunch was quiche and a pizza from a small shop and I think we were supposed to have it heated, but didn't know the words or didn't understand the question or something. We ended up eating both cold, which was fine, but kind of funny. We also found a chocolate shop across the street and had to stop in for a few treats! :)
Then it was off to meet the small group headed to St. Emillion for our wine tour of the afternoon. More on that tomorrow. In the meantime, here are a few photos of Bordeaux - more to come in future posts.
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| Beautiful little church at the end of a street near our hotel |
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| It was rainy for our whole trip, but we didn't mind after such a hot summer in Abu Dhabi. |
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| This tram travels all over Bordeaux and ensures the center of town is mostly pedestrian. |
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| These flowers are planted outside a church. I loved the color combination and how tightly packed they were. |
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