Bordeaux

In major efforts to see another area of France, and to get some good sun tans on the beach Erin and I made our way to Bordeaux this weekend. After class Friday ending at 5 I sprinted my way through the enormous Montparnasse train station to make our 5:40 train. After a long day of class it was nice to relax on the three hour long train ride. Once we got there Erin and I hopped in a cab over to our hotel/condo. I say this because there was a full kitchenette in the hotel room. Perfect for making the two boxs of macaroni and cheese I brought. I was hungry so I made some mac and cheese and we tried for about an hour to change our TV settings to English but ended up just settling for French NCSI, a show I have never watched in English either. Then shortly after the episode ended we both fell asleep.
We wanted this weekend to be nice and relaxing so what's more relaxing then going to a beach. We woke up at around 9 and checked the weather. It said sunny and 70 degrees. We stuck our hands out the window and saw there was potential for a very nice day. We threw on sundresses and put our beach bags together. Then we went took the tram over to the train station where we hopped on a bus that brought us two hours out side of Bordeaux to a city called Lacanau, on the Atlantic coast. During this bus ride the sky turned grey and it started to rain. Awesome right? When we finally got to the town we got off the bus shaking! We ran to a grocery store and grabbed cheese, cookies, and chips for lunch then into a boulangerie for a baguette. We had lunch and we were so sad that we weren't picnicing on the beach. We saw that the bus doesn't come back till 6:50 (it was 12:30 when we arrived). So we had to make the best of our day. We saw a movie theater so we ran over there just to see that it was closed. Then we walked down the strip and there were a ton of stores, they just all had sweatshirts for over 50 euro. We finally found one store that had 20 euro sweatshirts and we made the very smart investment into buying them. This made our time there much more bearable. Then we found a cafe right on the beach, ordered some warm drinks, and played sudoku for a few hours. It truly was relaxing and the view was amazing, it just wasn't very warm. After a while we were getting antsy so we decided to go down to the beach. We ran around down by the water for a little and then made our way back over to the bus stop. Don't get me wrong if it was warm out this little city would have been fantastic! The beach was beautiful, the town was adorable! I wouldn've even wanted to stay there all weekend if the weather was nice. It was just such a bummer. It started to rain so we went and sat at the bus stop and waited for it for an hour. It was such a nice relief to be on that bus and almost be warm. Two hours later we were back in Bordeaux then back on the tram, then back to our hotel, for some more mac and cheese. Erin is taking an online econ course so she had to do some homework so I did some of mine as well. This actually made for a very productive night. I went to bad soon after.

On Sunday we wanted to explore the town of Bordeaux. Two problems with that, everything is closed on Sundays, and it was rainy and cold. We still managed to entertain ourselves. We took the tram into the city center and walked along the lake and saw all the pretty fountains, and buildings of Bordeaux. It's a much bigger town then I thought, but since it was Sunday the place was practically dead. I'm not really sure of anything I saw but here were some of my favorite things. After walking around we took the tram back to our hotel and had lunch (we luckily found a grocery store open) and did some more homework. Then we went back to the train station and waited for our train. Hopped on and had the longest 4 hour ride back ever. We were in the same car as this group of people that were so wild. They were so loud and running around. I had my ipod all the way up and still could hear them. One guy wouldn't stop harassing us. First he brought his friends head over to us and kept saying "dit bonjour madame" (say hello madame). Later in the trip he took some bread and put some foi gras on it and stuffed it in our face saying "gout gout" (taste, taste). Clearly we didn't do it but he was very insistent and wouldn't leave us a lone. Finally we arrived back at Montparnasse and shortly after I was back at home. I walked in to see a little baby sleeping on the couch. That's always the best. Now I am just updating everyone and will shortly be going to bed soon!

WAIT actually I realized I was super hungry so I made Maya go on an adventure with me to get food. First we went to Macdo and it was closed, then we found that this place near us that has a good deal on noodles was open so I made her sit with me while I ate. Then we got back home around midnight and our keys weren't working to open the doors. We both freaked out and Maya called our host mom and she came and opened the door for us! Now for real I am heading to bed soon.