bordeaux, france

Our next big stop after Paris was going to be Barcelona, which was quite far away. We planned on stopping in Bordeaux and Carcassonne to kind of break up the long trip. The train from Paris to Bordeaux needed mandatory reservations, and after trying three different ticket offices at the station (and waiting in three different lines) we finally found the right office and got our reservations. After all that running around, we made our train JUST in time. In Bordeaux we found a cheap hotel right near the train station so we could easily get going the next day. We didn't do a whole lot in Bordeaux. It's a famous wine region, but we were only there for one night and tours of any of the vineyards didn't run on either day we were there. They also have less frequent ours because October is prime grape harvesting time and they are really busy with that I guess! We took the tramline into the main town area and walked around there and the fair that happened to be going on. Most things in town were closed, and it was kind of nice to take a bit of a break from being a tourist. I think I only took a couple of pictures! We got a bottle of Bordeaux wine to try, but while walking to the tram the bottom of the bag ripped open and the bottle smashed all over the sidewalk. We went back to the store, and the guy replaced our bottle no problem..hehe.. stupid cheap plastic bag!

In the morning we found out that the train we wanted to Carcassonne needed yet another mandatory reservation, and this time it was full. They only allot a certain amount of reservation places for 2nd class Eurail Pass holders (us!). We ended up having to wait 4 hours until the next train. We figured we had better try and make our reservations for our next train from Carcassonne to Barcelona while we had the chance, but after waiting in the line Mike accomplished nothing because the lady spoke no English. All we gathered was that it was not possible to make the reservation at that time. Oh well, we would try and make it when we got to Carcassonne. We had a little improvised pic-nic lunch at the station, and I ate my big baguette that I had bought. I accidentally got like this big loaf of bread instead of a sandwich baguette from the store. LOL, oh well it lasted me two meals instead of one. We went back to our hotel and they let us keep our bags there while we went into town to the post office. Everytime we go to the post office it turns into a big ordeal, trying to communicate, waiting in multiple lines, yadda yadda... but we were really lucky and got a girl that spoke great English and really helped us out. We combined our stuff into one big box to save some money which was good, and then went back to wait for our train. We also bought some mini icecream cup things, a box of 12, and are them all while we were waiting!