Bon Jour

'Bon Jour' and 'Merci' is about as much French as I know. Heading into my first wine country proved to be a bit harder than Spain. From San Sebastian, Spain I went to Bordeaux, France. If you ever want to experience many aspects of France, without having to go to Paris, then I would highly recommend Bordeaux. The city has great history and architecture, there is a very long street (Rue Saint Catherine) that has all the shopping you could ever want, great food, and of course the city is surrounded by French wine country.
I met another Australian (surprise, surprise) and a Swedish girl in Bordeaux. We wanted to go tour the wine country, but the guided tours for the day were already full. So we decided to rent bikes and trek into the country-side ourselves. Of course this creates a good story because nothing can ever be easy. It was 30 miles later that we arrived at our first and only winery to actually tour and taste. We picked their national holiday (Bastille Day, which is really a not what they call it) to go on this tour, so most of the chateaus were closed. But it was fun anyway. We saw lots of grape vineyards and beautiful countryside. We bought a bottle of wine from a shop, along with cheese, crackers, fruit, and bread and stopped in a vineyard and had lunch.
After our long bike ride, it was great to get back to the city, have a wonderful dinner, and enjoy the Bastille Day celebration. Bordeaux had a great fireworks display. Probably the best I have seen that was not choreographed to a music or laser show. And it was enjoyable to see how much the people enjoyed the fireworks. There were cheers, and oohs and ahhs all the time. It was much more enjoyable than 4th of July shows that are taken for granted now.