…on the way to Bordeaux
This morning we set off for the coast. It isn’t like any of us were strangers to the beach, but we wanted to see the French side of the Atlantic. We never actually got to the true Atlantic, but we got close enough.
We visited the city of Arcachon. Beautiful little sea-side resort town with some fantastic architecture and a great, flat wide-open beach. I’m sure in season, it would be packed with people, but today it was still pretty empty. I did see one woman sunbathing topless on the beach, even though it was windy and in the 70s today. But, have you ever noticed how its never the people sunbathing topless that you want to see topless?
To get all of us down to the beach, half of our group had ridden with a friend of our translator’s family. This woman was headed to the beach anyway for a few hours and we could tag along. After we all got there, we went out separate ways. We were going to meet up to go home. But, she was ready to leave before we were so, we decided part of the group would take the train back to Bordeaux. Unfortunately, when we got to the train station, the last train for the evening left 10 minutes earlier.
No choices at this point, but Lorissa’s husband drove half the group home and was going to return for me, Lorissa and their son. Lorissa called some friends in the town who immediately came and got us to take us to their home for dinner. Walter, who described himself as an Italian/Frenchman cooked dinner while the family and the rest of their guests chatted. As I understood it, there was an Orthodox priest, his wife and a couple neighbors there. While dinner was cooking Walter took me into his wine cellar (he said wine was his passion) and showed me a bottle of wine from one of the best wineries in the area that was bottled in 1913. He told me it would still be drinkable, but was more of a collector’s item than anything else. Walter’s wife is Russian as well, so the orthodox priest led the assembled group in a blessing of the meal. I stayed respectfully quiet.
As we finished up dinner, Lorissa’s husband returned to pick us up. But, the evening wasn’t over yet. About halfway home, the engine in their car died. Fortunately, they had roadside assistance insurance (which reminds me, I need to call AAA when I get home) and a tow truck came, followed by a cab to get us all, about two hours later than expected, back safely to Bordeaux. Just one more little adventure in the game of life..
