Les Silhouettes de Sophie : Toussaint Travels: Bordeaux

Last set of travels during my Toussaint trip was to Bordeaux to visit Amber, the dear friend that I met studying abroad in Lyon. She is also doing the program in Bordeaux and it's so nice to have someone who went through France with me once before, to go visit and talk about life in France again.

So, the one terrible thing about this trip was that I had the worst travel issues of all time. I booked two trains to travel to Bordeaux. I thought it would be easier to take the train, rather than a Blablacar, because it cost close to the same and was the same time-wise, so being alone I would rather be on a train than in a car with a stranger (although I do believe Blablacar is really safe). However, this decision was a poor one. Hindsight is 20/20. I booked an INTERCITÉ which is basically a slower train that connects big cities together that don't have TGV lines between them (TGV stands for train à grande vitesse or high speed trains). For whatever reason, Marseille and Bordeaux have no train line connecting them together. If you take the TGV, you have to go up through Paris and then back down. I had no idea that, although you can (mostly) count on TGV trains, you can hardly count on Intercité trains. My first train was delayed 2-3 hours, then because there were issues on the train line, we had to get off at Toulouse and take a bus for 3 more hours after I had already been traveling for about 4 hours. I was set to arrive at 9pm and ended up arriving at 2 am. Then, on the way back, my train at 10 am was cancelled because they were missing a train carriage. So I had to wait three hours for the next one, which was delayed by 30 minutes and then almost two hours because there was an accident involving "persons." It was really sad, but also really scary because everyone was freaking out about getting home to Marseille. People were crying and people got off the train and took taxis. Finally, we made it to Marseille and, luckily, they added an extra train that took me back to Toulon. So needless to say, the travels of this trip sucked a lot and that was why I was so content not to travel anymore. Traveling makes me nervous and I hate layovers. Instead of waiting patiently, I always feel like I'm waiting anxiously just in case I miss my train or plane or whatever. I've gotten better about it but it's still frustrating.

BUT now onto the good stuff, which was literally everything else about this trip. I loved seeing Amber and her boyfriend, David. I loved Bordeaux and just hanging out there. I would love to go back. I was there for the end of the second week, Wednesday through Sunday. I spent Halloween there, which was fun. Here are some pictures of things we did.

We went to a wine museum and had a wine tasting. (Bordeaux is famous for wine!)
We ate Fufu (japanese ramen) in the Jardin Public.
We had a Halloween party where we carved pumplins and watched Halloweentown 2.
We got dressed up on Halloween and went out to a really fun pub that was super decorated and had a costume contest!
We walked around Rue Sainte-Cathérine and Place des Quinconces.
It was a lovely time!