At the end of October, Tom and I took the train to Bordeaux. Ostensibly to see The Drones play, I was also really interested to explore the city and drink all the wine.

The Drones are one of my favourite bands ever, and when we lived in Melbourne we would see them play pretty regularly. They don’t tour Europe regularly, so when we heard they were playing a few concerts in France we jumped on the tickets pretty quickly.

The gig was great, they played a bunch of new songs from their forthcoming album, and I managed to swipe Dan’s setlist after the encore. I subsequently lost that setlist on the walk home, but never mind!

In Bordeaux city we had some pretty good food, some terrible beer and some lovely wine. We found great espresso and croissants at tametebako and I wish we had bought some tea there while we had the chance. We visited the roastery for l’Alchimiste over the river and bought a few bags of very tasty beans. l’Alchimiste is situated in a sort of community hub called Darwin Éco-Système which reminded me somewhat of the Abbotsford Convent community in Melbourne. At the Darwin, they have a hotel, a co-working space, some ateliers and a cafe/restaurant. As well, obviously as the torrefacteur where we bought our beans.

On our last full day, we hired a car and drove out to Cap Ferret, a headland just west of Bordeaux on the Bay of Biscay. The weather was beautifully mild, just a soft breeze, and the water was lovely and crisp. We walked along the beach until we got tired, then headed back to one of the towns for a late-ish lunch. We drove back to Bordeaux via the Dune du Pilat, the tallest sand dune in Europe. We climbed to the peak just in time for sunset looking across to Cap Ferret where we had just been.

Beautiful.