Leaving Paris + Bordeaux good times.

As I write this, we are in a car in Bordeaux, rocketing towards the biggest sand dune in Europe, and apparently a beach as well.

While I enjoyed my time in Paris, especially towards when we left the place, Bordeaux has been nothing short of amazing.

First, the Boyé family, with whom I have been staying, have welcomed me with, quite literally, hugs and kisses, and, somewhat contradictingly, with open arms. They have been amazing tour guides, hosts, and friends, and I could not have asked more of my stay in Bordeaux.

The Boyé family minus Marie and Simon. Great people (including the missing ones).

Second, the city itself is amazing. The architecture is beautiful, and amazingly unified, kind of like Bath in England. Matthieu has been kind enough to give me a tour of the place by both night and day. Very charming city.

By day.

By night.

The people also seem to be quite a bit friendlier than those in Paris, despite me being a minor minority here.

Visiting the countryside was interesting, despite it being more or less as expected - that is, full of wineries.

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So a bit of time-lapse magic, and I'm now on the train from Milan to Venice. A bit about that later.

Back to where we started, and then a bit after.

We scaled the epic sand dune, known as the Dune de Pilat. Going up was ok, because there were stairs. Going down to the other side was also ok, because it was just sliding down sand.

Coming back up the sandy side was absolute hell. Walking up a steep mountain of loose sand for what I think was 1km was just slightly exhausting. I was extremely pleasantly surprised when my legs didn't hurt one bit the day after. Must be the magic in the water.

The water that I fell into after wading in and tripping on a submerged rock.

Despite the physical pain of both the climb and the fall, a fun time was had, and it was beautiful there. An amazing experience that money probably can't buy.

Me on the top of Dune du Pilat.

While Matthieu and I trekked back up the dune, he imparted some of his many fun facts on me, which he had been doing during the whole stay, some of which include:
- French people enjoy breaking rules, and Germans will hate you for it;
- the two important elements in how good a wine is are the earth, and the year in which it was made;
- life without coffee is not really a life a all;
- people in Madagascar are very resourceful;
- the wealth of Bordeaux is built on both slavery and wine;
- colonialism was bad;
- despite his frequent disregard for timeliness, his children are puzzlingly continually concerned about the issue of punctuality.

Anyway. Enough of that. After trekking back up and down, we proceeded to Arcachon (driving, thankfully), a nice beachside town. We had dinner while watching the sunset, which was quite a perfect last night in Bordeaux.

So now I'm on the train to Venice, still missing Bordeaux.

I did pretty much nothing in Milano except visit the duomo, and managing to get myself lost. The duomo was nice, as was the hotel. Yeah, end commentary.

So Paris, my favourite places were the Louvre, and the Luxembourg Gardens. The Louvre was amazing for what was in it as well as the architecture. The Gardens were very serene, beautiful, and relatively people-free. I also quite liked Versailles, although I thought it would be bigger.

In Bordeaux, I'm fairly certain my favourite part was everything. Just sitting around and eating, shooting the breeze, sightseeing with The Best Tour Guides Ever, and experiencing how people actually lived in a non-Paris part of France.

I don't mind Paris, but I definitely love Bordeaux.

Word of the day: Dune