Sad to leave San Sebastian this morning and the wonderful Airbnb and host Asier but onwards and upwards we go. Our target today was Bordeaux, France. Crossing the border of countries in only half and hour! Such a strange concept for Australians. We started our drive to Bordeaux by detouring to Biarritz (as suggested by Asier), a coastal town on the Bay of Biscay. Funnily enough, as soon as we crossed the border into France, the weather turned grey and the Spanish sun vanished away. Biarritz was a nice place but would probably be much nicer in summer with the beach and the waterfront walks. We stopped into a creperie, Blé Noir, on the seaside to eat some buckwheat crepes - great for lunch! We decided to skip the expensive road tolls and take the minor roads to Bordeaux. This meant that instead of travelling at 130 km/h, we often travelled between 50 and 90 km/h and encountered a roundabout at least every 500 metres! In the end, the minor roads really only took an extra hour so it wasn't too bad. We finally got to Gradignan, near Bordeaux and where our Airbnb was right on time at 4 pm. We were met by a friend of our host who let us in and showed us around. We decided to try and get into the city by a tram and Calvin discovered tram 'park and rides' nearby. This sounded like a good idea except for the fact that you actually need a tram ticket to enter the parking lot (which we didn't have) in the first place which meant we had to awkwardly back out from the boom gate. We found some free street parking anyway near a tram station which worked out even better. The problem now was the issue of getting a tram ticket from the automatic machine. It was broken and didn't make any sense. In the end we just drove into the city and parked in an expensive carpark. Bordeaux was much better than we expected. Not only were the buildings lovely, the street we walked down had heaps of outdoor stores and we found some arch support insoles for Kate's new shoes in the huge Sports Adventure store. The man serving told us a tip - go across the old bridge and see Bordeaux from across the river. On the way to the bridge, we stopped in a patisserie - Calvin had a croissant and Kate had a chocolate. The lady in the patisserie was really nice and let us try a small canelé - a cake typically from Bordeaux. Kate didn't really like it but we didn't tell the lady that! We didn't really research much about Bordeaux prior to arriving but it was definitely a beautiful city. It also seems quite vibrant and lively despite the cold weather! We also arrived in Bordeaux on the weekend of the annual street markets - braderie d'hiver - so the centre of the city was packed with people and market stalls. We found a stall selling lots and lots of olives so we couldn't resist and bought a small punnet to snack on our wanderings.  We walked across the Pont de Pierre and saw the city lights all along the bank of the river. It was freezing cold - the temperature was 6 degrees however the wind chill made it seem like it was in the negatives! We headed back over the bridge and found a small but great Vietnamese Restaurant - Que Toi - and had amazingly fresh bò bún with crispy chicken news. So good to have some fresh vegetables. After dinner, we headed over to the Le Miroir d'Eau in front of the Place de la Bourse. Apparently the 'water mirror' is a huge water feature which is meant to have a thin layer of water to reflect the buildings and lights of the city however, it may have been shut off for the winter as there was no water in it. Instead we just walked on the empty fountain and took in the lights. We headed home - hardly any traffic, the only thing to watch out for were the tram lines which were confusing - and met our host, Paola who was lovely and only really spoke French. Kate did a fantastic job at understanding and even responding in the language!