honeymoonin' in the south of france
pt.1
Arguably the greatest perk of moving to London has been the proximity to Europe. Just a hop, skip, and a plane or train ride away, you can find yourself in an oasis of the greatest food, art, and cigarettes the Western world has to offer. We hop around as often as time will allow and back accounts can afford. Whilst every trip is special, our trip this past year was even moreso as we bopped around France to join in the celebrations of a marriage and commemorate our own.
Our good friends hosted their wedding in a beautiful Châteaux 40 minutes outside of Bordeaux mid-June. Seeing as my husband has known this couple since his uni days, he was initially invited as a guest and I as his +1. However, me being me, I was able to weasel my way into the center of their friend group and get myself an invite as a bridesmaid, turning the tables and making him my +1. We’ll never stop joking about this.
Seeing as Isaac and I had just been married 5 months prior, we decided to extend our 3-day holiday to Bordeaux and turn it into a week-long honeymoon along the South of France. I won’t bore you with the details but I am a google-maps-mastermind and after weeks of hunting and surfing and price comparisons, I landed on a small village outside of Biarritz, called Bidart, as our final destination. This area is technically Basque country, though I’ve come to understand since that many people don’t consider the French side of the boarder properly “Basque.” Based on the architecture though, and quality of food, I’ll continue to disagree.
BORDEUX
Given the amount of luggage we needed to travel with, encompassing looks for a three day wedding followed by a beach holiday, we opted to travel from London via train so that we could bring as many items as we needed. We didn’t do too badly in the end, boarding with a checked-size suitcase, a carry-on sized suit case, a suit bag holding two suits and three formal dresses, plus a large personal item each. On Thursday morning, we set off for St. Pancras to make a 7am train to Paris. I love the Eurostar and I’ll continue to shout its praises from the rooftops. Though a slightly longer journey, you save yourself hours by not having to trek through an airport and all its security. If we had taken a later train, we also would have been able to bring drinks, but drinks at 7am on day one of our vacation felt a little out of bounds.
We entered Paris’ Gare Du Nord around 10:20am. We had initially planned to stop at our favorite boulangerie (get their chocolate chip cookies, just do it!) nearby and take our time getting to the next train, but something in my gut told me to get our asses to the next station. And thank god we did. The Paris metro does not take phone payments so unless you already have a travel card, you have to wait in line at one of the 2/10 machines that actually offers the physical card before you can enter the system. We probably waited 20 minutes behind a bunch of tourists (some being French natives!) who couldn’t figure out what sort of tickets they needed to purchase. (I’m not being over dramatic here, once it was our turn, I got our tickets printed in a minute flat compared to every group in front of us taking 5 - 7…..) Needless to say, this stressed me out.
We eventually made it down to Gare Montparnasse and easily found a storage locker to stash out things whilst we went for lunch. Instead of rushing to our fave lunch spot on the Luxembourg Gardens, we opted to keep our already high stress levels in check and eat at a nearby cafe. To be fair, it’s Paris - it’s hard to go wrong. (the nasty spots are pretty easy to spot. if there’s too much frou-frou or it’s too tourist enticing, go the other way!)
We sat outside of Cafe de la Place, I lit my first cigarette of the trip, and my shoulders finally settled down. We ordered a carafe of rose to share and Isaac ordered a pint. A beer had in France is my favorite kind of beer. Half the time, he’ll just order “a beer” rather than specifying type and what comes is always a cold pint of some sort of lager which goes down incredibly well. We started with escargots and a smoked salmon plate which was divine. We dove in headfirst as we hadn’t eaten since boarding the train and those plates were cleared far quicker than I’d like to admit. For mains, Isaac got steak tartare with frites, and I got some sort of Mediterranean salad bowl. Meal 1 was a success complete with sunny skies and a great show next to us of two American families from the deep south with young kids who were incredibly confused as to why the tables were so close together.
We boarded our second train of the day around 1:15pm, 20 minutes before departure, and the train was already full. If the French are anything, they are punctual! Isaac was eventually able to find a spot to store all our luggage and I dozed off as we began our 2.5 hour journey to Bordeaux.
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It was hot as hell when we got off our second and last train, well over 32C / 90F. Our Airbnb was a 17 minute walk from Gare du St. Jean so we put our heads down and made a B-line for the address, neither speaking a word. We reached the location in 15 minutes thanks to yours truly.
We were both super happy with the Airbnb we chose. It was a studio with a kitchenette, table and chairs, pull out couch, and a private bathroom. And, most importantly, a small AC unit.
It just so happened that a wine festival was happening on the waterfront that weekend so after a cool shower, Isaac and I dolled ourselves up and we went back out into the heat. The festival was a lovely little set up. For €23, you were given a reusable tasting glass and 10 tasting vouchers all accessed from a QR code on your phone. You were allotted 1 glass per stand (there were 10 stands, thank god) and the vouchers could be used through the entirety of the weekend festival, Thursday to Sunday. It also included a proper tasting event and a vineyard tour but we unfortunately didn’t have time for either.
I wish I took more pictures - a reoccurring theme - but I can say with confidence that the four glasses we had prior to dinner slapped and definitely aided in our beating the heat. Around 8pm we headed just five minutes further into the city for a four course meal (with wine pairings!) at Le Bouchon Bordelais with some of our dear friends and fellow wedding guests. Of course the only photo I have is of this main course which was Hake in two types of sauces topped with kimchi. No, I don’t remember what either of the sauces were.
From memory, we started with a small amuse bouche of little (thumbtack sized) bowls of cucumber gazpacho and some sort of croquet. The gazpacho might have been my favorite element of the entire meal. The first course was a black pudding croquet in a black garlic aioli. I can’t remember the second course but the third was fish for the girls and lamb for the boys, and we finished it off with an apricot cake topped with pistachio and almond creams. This dessert was especially fun because up until recently we all thought Isaac was allergic to all nuts. However over the course of this last year I have been testing that theory out and it appears he’s only allergic to peanuts! Well the boy had a bite of this nut-filled dessert and, with all six pairs of eyes glued to him for the following half hour, he turned out to be just FINE! I have no idea what the wine pairings were but they were all white except what the boys got with their lamb. Yum. By the way, these four courses and four wine pairing came to about €65 per head!
We of course ended the night with gelato from Amorino because we needed some chocolate. Luckily temps had cooled by 11pm.
The next morning, Isaac and I immediately stepped out into the boiling sun to grab some breakfast bits from the local Carrefour: Danone yoghurt, instant coffee, fruit, and of course some pastries.
After packing up our room and leaving our luggage with our dear hostess, you guessed it, we went straight back to the wine festival for another 4 glasses of wine. Def worth our €23.
Around 12:30pm, our dear friend who happened to be our bride’s maid of honor arrived into town so we met her, stowed her bags, and popped a squat at a random cafe for lunch. I of course had to order Oeufs Mayo to start because it’s probably the French’s greatest contribution. Two salads and some salmon risotto for mains. A bottle of white wine to split.
About halfway through, another uni friend came to meet us and Isaac, being the gentleman that he is, went to buy us hand-held fans. The sweat on our backs by this point was ridiculous. After a long, lingering, fanning lunch, we all gathered our bags and called a car to take us to the Chateaux. Our friend fell asleep, Isaac went back and forth between X and attempting conversation with the French driver, and I kept my eye on the horizon, aweing at vineyard and vineyard as we made our way through the rolling French hills. We arrived sweaty and ready for a nap.
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To go into the wedding details would require a whole post in and of itself. And in true Madison fashion, I barely took any pictures. But here are a couple of cute ones!
This is already quite long so I’ll stop there for now. Next time we’ll walk through our little Basque adventure - Ciao!
On French trains do you reserve seats like on Irish ones? Is that pretty European standard? (Also the trip sounds amazing and you look so happy together!)