Must have been Paris as the stressful place, but I’m starting to feel a little better now about driving here although still have my tricky moments!

Much of the driving the last 2 days to reach Bordeaux has been tollways and we’ve now learnt the ticketing and payment system a bit better so there’s always cash on hand to feed the machine. Very much a user-pays system, seems to have cost us about $40 odd to drive down here using various toll roads and side roads. As you reach a toll gate entering the system, a ticket only is issued and upon leaving, put the ticket back in, the machine tells you how much and you entr the appropriate cash although change does spit out as well.

Countryside is very flat and miles and miles of crops grown seemingly everywhere. As we reached the Bordeaux area, crops turned to vineyards with spring growth now well on the vines and things looking very green.

Found our way to our accommodation (in a fashion) – managed to park the car the first spot I could where I didn’t have to reverse park a right hand drive car, walked into the Chambres d’Hotel with sign out front “Chez St Simon” and were warmly welcomed by the owner (my age and English speaking) only to be told that no, our ‘Chez Simon” was the building behind and oops we were not staying with her!
Car parking out the back was probably not possible as changes were being made to the bariiers (or something) and we may have to drag our bags around the block. But a wander down the road and watching other cars drive up soon told us that yes, I could drive up the alleyway, park and unload so that’s exactly what we did. The car hasn’t moved since – seems it’s today the work begins so now 8am and I’ll keep an eye on what others in the alley are doing if I need to move it.

Anyway, we’ve got this lovely 1 bedroom apartment with all the mod cons – except an English speaking TV channel but that’s no loss.
Washing machine has been full on since we got here – neither of us has a clean item of clothing almost! And yet I seem to have this HUGE bag full of ‘stuff’!!!

On arrival in Blaye yesterday afternoon, we met with ‘Clarissa’ of course at the other apartments and she invited us to a Bordeaux wine tasting and discussion about the Bordeaux region which we went to at 6.30pm. Sat with 5 others at the table and began our first understanding of Bordeaux wines, how and why they are what they are and had a tasting session and discussion of 3 different wines. A really nice introduction to the wines and the region so now we can spend the next 3 days exploring. Satyed in the same little restaurant for dinner of lamb and bbq roast vegies – done the French way of course – yumm!!!

First stop this morning is the big open air market for some produce and bread (more bread…. mmmm, love the stuff here) and might just have a slower day today as it’s been rather busy the past week or so. So as soon as this blog is done – the day begins!!