Bordeaux in 365 Bottles: June 2016

Welcome to a new series on Luxe Adventure Traveler. As you might have guessed if you read this post on deciding whether to move back to the good ‘ol US of A or flee to France, I opted for the grueling process of obtaining a French long stay visa and moved to the Wine Capital of the World. I’ve only lived in Bordeaux for just over two weeks now, but when I asked on our Facebook Page if you all would be interested in the tidbits that make up living in France and that never really make it on to the blog you responded with a resounding YES. And so this is the very first installation of Bordeaux in 365 Bottles, which will also be the name of the travel memoir/guide to Bordeaux I’ll be writing about my year living in Bordeaux.

Highs

Can you spot Emma?

I moved to France! Holy cow, I honestly never thought this day would come. When Tim suggested I move to France, a country we’ve casually tossed around the idea of living in down the road, while he goes to work on a job assignment in South Korea for a year, it was one of those things I thought I’d say I’d do but would never actually happen. Yet, here I am.

There are over 2 kilometers of wine tasting at Fete le Vin

Invited to the Bordeaux Fête le Vin. As much as I’d like to just shop and eat macarons all day, I’ve got a purpose for my time here in Bordeaux. I chose Bordeaux not only because I fell in love when I visited last year on a Viking River Cruise, but also because it’s a French city that I hadn’t given much thought to beyond it being the gateway to one of the world’s most famous wine regions.

Yet, as much as I researched I couldn’t really figure out what to do here with the extra time I had before and after my Viking River Cruise. A shame at the time, I saw an opportunity and am seizing it. Bordeaux isn’t written about much and I’m so looking forward to sharing all of my finds in the city and the region.

I’m off to a running start and so far all of the public relations and tourism representatives I’ve met are equally excited to have me here. Just six days in to my new life in Bordeaux, I was invited to the 10th annual Bordeaux Fête le Vin. Not only did I get to experience all the exciting things open to the public during the 4-day festival (which I’ll tell you about soon in a post dedicated to the Bordeaux Fête le Vin), I was thrilled to attend some press only events like a special lunch on the rooftop of the Intercontinental Bordeaux – Le Grand Hotel.

Challenges

I feel like I aged another 36 years just this month alone. I faced so many challenges that I literally sat down in one of my favorite spots in Bordeaux, had an “ugly” cry for all to see and looked up one-way flights to my hometown.

I seemingly got hit with one thing after another. So while we were posting fun photos of the wine festival and gorgeous, sunny photos of my new ‘hood, here’s what was going on behind the scenes:

Napping with Angel after a trip to Israel earlier this year

Our 17-year old cat passed away. Starting my downward spiral, we came home from our dive certification trip to Deep Water Cay in The Bahamas to our 17-year old cat not doing well. For the last year, we’ve been battling a number of issues from a disease that meant the removal of her teeth to kidney failure. Just before we went to The Bahamas, Angel was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. We came home to her not eating and the situation quickly declined. Just days before I was to make the first in a series of trips preparing for our move to Bordeaux, she passed away. And I was devastated.

Grief stricken. Some may not understand this since Angel was a cat, but she was my baby. She’d been with me my entire adult life since I got my very first apartment in college. I could barely function and my chest physically hurt with sadness. I certainly couldn’t put words down on paper. I’m still incredibly behind on writing about trips to Israel, Morocco, Rome and The Bahamas. But writing this post is a good start in getting back on track…

Getting a French bank account. You can’t do anything in France without a French bank account. Had I known what I know now, I would have booked myself on a flight and gotten my ass to France to start the process of opening a French bank account back in April when I picked up my French long stay visa from the French Embassy in Rome.

As a former banker at JP Morgan Chase, I officially know squat about banking in other countries. Forget about walking in with your $25, opening an account and walking out with it that very day. No, in France I’ve now signed more paperwork and supplied more documents to prove my financial well-being than I did when we bought a house in Phoenix.

I was almost homeless. You know how I said you can’t do anything in France without a bank account? No matter that I had more than enough money and offered to pay my entire year’s rent with a bank transfer right then and there. It’s not possible!

France has all kinds of laws regarding renting that I’m still trying to wrap my head around and precisely none of them favor a self employed, business owning expat that the French Embassy declared well-off enough to support herself living in France. Despite having already come to Bordeaux and found an apartment, it was much to my surprise to come back to sign the lease days before I was supposed to move in and discover the agency had changed management. They were now refusing to do the things necessary on their end to finish setting up the lease with my new French bank.

Instead of spending the two days I had planned to give that apartment a good scrubbing so I could show up and move in later in the week, I spent those two days knocking on any agency’s door I came across. I ended up looking at the apartment I now live in on a Tuesday evening on my way to the airport. And I managed to still move in Friday as I’d planned in the other apartment.

My apartment is still in the same neighborhood I had planned to live in and it was recently renovated, so it’s like I got a brand new place. It turned out well since the apartment is much nicer than the one that screwed me at the last second, but I was seriously questioning whether moving to France was the right decision when it all seemed to go south.

Emma gave me a panic attack

I got food poisoning. And worse, Emma did too. The ultimate low came when we got Thai take-out from Pitaya, a popular place that always has a line. I’ll spare you the disgusting details, but I spent a delirious day hugging the toilet and then two full weeks after not being able to eat or drink anything without getting sick.

As if that weren’t bad enough, Emma was stressed out from her kitty sister missing, our house in Italy being packed up and the move to France. We gave her a healthy scoop of the tainted Thai food. I learned how to track down an emergency veterinarian late at night when she couldn’t even get up off the floor.

Thankfully I moved from a developing country to the first world again and Bordeaux has an amazing emergency veterinary service called VetoAdom Gironde and they make house calls. It was amazing. A vet and vet tech were at my apartment within 20 minutes of calling and they were even able to do blood work right in my living room.

Poor Emma needed two injections for her bloated belly and nausea. We made another visit to a different veterinarian the following day where she was diagnosed with a parasite and put on antibiotics. I’m happy to report that nearly two weeks later and she’s finally feeling like herself again.

Kayaking the Dordogne | Best of Perigord

Most Popular Post

As I mentioned, I haven’t been writing much the last two months. But the most popular post I managed to put out in June was:

My 5 French Bucket List Adventures

Most Popular Instagram Photo

Those Bordeaux sunsets! ? What a gorgeous end as this year’s @bordeauxfetelevin winds down. #bfv2016

A photo posted by Luxe Adventure Traveler (@luxeadventuretrvlr) on Jun 26, 2016 at 1:44pm PDT

Who knew Bordeaux also produces sweet white wines?

What I’m Drinking This Month

A book titled Bordeaux in 365 Bottles wouldn’t live up to its name if I didn’t sample all the French wine I possibly can, all in the name of learning about French wine, of course! What I tried in June:

Haut-Médoc Grand Cru Classé 2011 Château La Tour Carnet, one of ten fourth growth wines from the historic Bordeaux Official Wine Classification of 1855. Complex, this is a red that definitely needs to be enjoyed with food. Though sampling it in the very rooms in Place de la Bourse where the classification took place in 1855 added a little something special to it.

Domaine du Vic 2012 Cadillac, a sweet white wine from the Cadillac appellation. I long ago outgrew my Moscato phase, but I’m enjoying Bordeaux sweet wines when paired with a cheese plate and some fruit and nuts. It’s refreshing on a hot day and makes for a light dessert to satisfy my sweet tooth.

Château Coudert 2012 Saint Émilion Grand Cru. There are 57 different appellations of Bordeaux wine and they either come from the Left Bank or the Right Bank, where the Saint Emilion appellation is located. There’s almost a rivalry of which bank produces the best wines. I haven’t sampled enough yet to determine if I’m a right or left bank kind of gal.

Château Ferrière 2005 Grand Cru Classe and Château Ferrière 2011 Grand Cru Classé, one of fourteen third growth wines from the Margaux (where you can find the famous Chateau La Tour). Unlike Italian wineries where they tend to produce a least half a dozen different wines each season, Bordeaux wineries typically produce only a first and sometimes a second wine. It’s the vintage (year of production) that makes the difference in how the wine varies in taste because every grape harvest is different.

Château Sémeillan Mazeau 2012 Cru Bourgeois from the Médoc, where you find breathtaking chateau after chateau that look like something straight off a postcard.

Bottle Count: 5

I started Judgement of Paris in The Bahamas…in April

What I’m Reading This Month

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve been reading the same book since April: Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine. It’s not that it’s not an interesting book, I’ve just not had time to read!

If you’ve got an awesome book recommendation, I’d love to hear it. I used to love reading and I want to get back to consuming books like I consume macarons (I ate five today). And if I share here what I’m reading, I’ve got more incentive

Coming Up in July 2016

I’m still getting settled in and slowly discovering my new city. I plan on hanging around for a while as Emma gets back to normal. Tim visits at the beginning of the month and then my mom is coming to stay with me for three weeks toward the end of the month. And I might start branching out a little further with day trips on the train to Saint-Emilion, Arcachon and Dune du Pilat.