Erki & Katrina hitch-hiking Europe: French police and Bordeaux

Big waves from Bordeaux

Getting here started off with an interesting twist. We were dropped off by the speedway by Raphaël and tried to get a car there. We stood there for more than a hour and seemed to have very little chance of finding a car that would take us closer to our destination. Then, a local police car stopped at the truck stop behind us. They asked us to come away from the speedway and said it's not allowed to hitch-hike there =P
Facing no other option but trying to get a car from the truck stop, we decided to ask the policemen who had stopped us, if they knew a better spot, where hitch-hiking was allowed. To our surprise, they said that they can drop us off to a place nearby, where we could get to Bordeaux. So out of nowhere, we had hitch-hiked on a police car =D

They took us to a small town nearby that had a national highway going through it, in the direction of Bordeaux. We walked a bit to the edge of the town and once we lifted up our sign, about the third car stopped and picked us up. It was a cool guitar teacher from Nantes and he was on the way to enjoy his vacation in Cognac, which was on half way to Bordeaux. It was fairly long but fun ride, talked a bit about music and Olympics.

From midpoint to Bordeaux we waited for a bit to get a ride (and Erki got attacked by a vicious plant). But soon enough we were picked up by a cool guy that was heading to his new home on the coast, nearby Bordeaux. He dropped us off just outside of the town, from where we used the tram line to get to the center, where we met Guillaume, our host.

Guillaume is a talented musician and had a piano concert scheduled just at the time when we arrived, so we had an opportunity to go to listen to him play. He was performing some of his own piano pieces to his friends in a close by bar, on a piano he actually tuned himself. He is really good and it was awesome to listen to him play and relax after 7 long hours of hitch-hiking.

On Thursday, we took a walk around town with Guillaume. He was so passionate to show his favourite spots and talk about his town. Great to see someone so enthusiastic about the place they live at. We saw a cool water mirror, some nice narrow streets and a big boat in the harbor. Also got some blue smurf ice cream =P

In the evening we enjoyed some French cheese and Bordeaux wine. Since we didn't have a corkscrew, it turned out to be quite a challenge to open the wine bottle. Luckily we had a real Frenchman around and he showed us how it's supposed to be done (see pictures below for illustration) =P

After the wine and cheese we climbed up to the roof of Guillaumes house and enjoyed the view over Bordeaux at night. As most of the houses are not higher than 5 floors, you could easily see over most of the city. Beautiful sight.

So we're happily in Bordeaux right now. Heading south on Saturday =)