Adour Hotel Bayonne

... system. A good use of modern technology.

The ceremony was held in both French and English, a paragraph in the first, followed by the translation in the second. So both of them said first “oui” and then “I do”: doubly married! That’s similar to the way my wife and I were married.

After the ceremony finished, we took some photos in doors and out and then had cake and ...

... the day walking around the city, climbing the cathedral, and just breathing in the clean air.

Bordeaux is a big city, but clearly nothing in comparaison to Paris. Apparently the Bordelais have a reputation to keep up, that of being snotty big city people.

I have yet to encounter a snotty Bordelais.

HUGE gay population here though! It's nice, people don't have to hide, etc. ;-)

... Baker. He was on his way back from Asia to his home in New York and had an hour’s layover in Atlanta. He wanted to know if I were in the States so we could talk on the phone and catch up on the news. It’s expensive to talk on cell phones internationally, so we deferred the pleasure of a conversation. Still it's sometimes amazing how we can keep in touch with friends and family all over the world, almost instantly.

Tomorrow will be an exciting and busy day.

... Mr. Mrs. Bernal were there too, we had a very enjoyable evening, catching up on news, comparing notes about the recent convention we had in Normandy and planning for the future. French dinner can last quite a while, but several of us were tired from the day's activities so we finished the meal at around 9:00 pm, and went our separate ways; looking forward to meeting again soon.

We spent our first day in Bordeaux relaxing and wandering around the city. Ate a few baguettes.

The next day we caught a train to St Emilion to check out the beautiful little village.

On our last day we did a wine tour of Medoc ...

... at the intersection of two rivers.. double the river fun. I really had no information about the town, so I spent my time getting lost trying to find Hotel Loustau, finding hotel loustau, getting to the train station to buy my ticket for the next day, and walking around a bit. I did stop in at a cathedral in town and it was really gorgeous. There were some small services going on and I could here the monks or priests chanting, which was ...

... for naught! Damn, coach Leo strikes again! Dinner was a stroke of luck. I pointed out the busiest looking place that didn't appear to have lots of tourists and we sat down at a place called Le Bistrot Sainte Cluque. We had some of the best paella I have ever had. Ironically, this is in France, not Spain. Apparently, paella is a southern delicacy which is why I didn't see it one time in the two weeks we were in Spain. Off to bed now...

... speaks a few words of English, but we communicate very well. He is very enthusiastic about it. As soon as I got there and he heard that my dad as well is a contractor, we went into a 45 minute long demonstration of what he does for work. It's really interesting actually. In this area they don't use as much wood like we do back at home for building homes. He too built his family's house but with oven heated ...

... one but one run by the city council... we were in the basement dorm which were next to the bathrooms..Upstairs was another dorm, but they had to go through our dorm to get to the bathroom and a group of about 30 or so young French teenagers.. I say teenagers because most of he girls walked through in just their undies ha ha ... and yes they were fully developed teenagers ha ha .. but back to the point... I went to bed early and tried to sleep altho it was ...

... and caught the 3.30 pm to Bayonne which arrived at 8.30 pm ... I was tired so I booked into the Paris-Madrid hotel next to the station..Its a friendly hotel run by a couple called Patrick and his wife Sylvie.. Hes very knowlegable about the Camino de Santiago and we had a long chat until I realised it was 9.30pm and I was starving, I only had to go across the road and found an empty ...