Day 1: Arrive in Bordeaux, meet the team, eat in Saint-Emilion and Bordeaux – 2014 Medoc Marathon Diary No.1

Date: September 10-11, 2014

I’m back safely. This time, I’ll update my diary not from there but from back home.

From here on, I will only write in a diary style in so-called blog posts.

We will be setting up a separate fixed page (as in WordPress) to develop detailed summary information about the Medoc Marathon. Please wait a little longer.

My departure from Japan was on the night of 10th, and I took a midnight flight of Air France again. I went directly from my office.

iPhoneアプリからのインターネットチェックインを済ませ、例によって銭湯に立ち寄ってから羽田空港へと向かいました。

It’s really easy to check in online. The airport was empty because it was a Wednesday, so I was able to complete the various procedures in a surprisingly short time. I was able to check in my luggage.

As usual, I ate Ramen noodles before boarding. I didn’t expect any in-flight meal, but Air France’s wine is delicious, so I took it well.

After a good night’s sleep, I arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris about an hour early.

After 6 hours of waiting, the plane to Bordeaux took off. It was a beautiful day in Paris, and I could see the city of Paris from the sky. At that time, I was thinking that I won’t go to Paris again…

The flight between Paris Bordeaux takes about 1 hour and 10 minutes. We arrived at Bordeaux-Mérignac airport on time. The baggage claim area looks like Bordeaux.

By the way, this was my third time in Bordeaux, but my first time in this airport.

At this airport, I met up with one of the members of « Team Hatsu Ten » who was running with us this time. He had arrived in Europe earlier, and after sightseeing around Spain and France, he had arrived here in Bordeaux the day before, so we decided to join him on this day.

さてさて「チーム初てん」というのは、初台にありますこちらの素敵なBar「tententen初台店」に通うお酒も好きだけど走るのも好きなメンバーで構成されたランニングチームです。

It’s a bit far from my house, but I met the « Master (female) » (I don’t know if I should call her « Master » or not, but lol) here through my music-related business, and through such a connection, I was able to join everyone here this time.

So I met up with one of the members of the team Hatsu Ten, « Samurai-kun », who was wearing a kimono in France. We immediately got a reserved car and headed to Saint-Emilion, about an hour away from Bordeaux.

This time, the car was a big type of Fiat 500. The softness of the steering wheel was annoying, but the overall driving comfort was perfect.

We arrived at Saint-Emilion safely, and first of all, since we were both hungry, we had lunch in the city.

A simple « menu du jour » of the day. The menu was very typical of southwest France. The taste was not bad.

« Samurai-kun » said that he was speaking a lot of Japanese after a long time.

After the meal, we started sightseeing in the city. While taking pictures of each other.

I visited Saint-Emilion once, in 2013.

It was as beautiful as ever.

Saint-Emilion is of course a wine region. Well, in September, grapes are growing like this.

I’ve been walking around eating cannoli and

We took a stroll while stopping at a souvenir shop.

I found myself in this small town for almost three hours. It was past 16:00 when we left Saint-Emilion.

And we arrived at Bordeaux around 5:30pm. I said goodbye to Samurai-kun and checked into the hotel. It’s a 2 star hotel next to the Opera House in the center of Bordeaux, where I’ll stay for 3 nights. This is the view from the room.

After resting for a while, I met up with Samurai again after 7pm.

On this day, two other members of the same team were coming into Bordeaux from Paris in the evening, so we decided to have dinner together that evening. The place was already reserved.

We were told that they would be arriving before 8:00 p.m., so we decided to go to the hotel where they were staying and wait for them.

After that, they arrived safely, and we took the tram for two stops from there, and had dinner at this restaurant which is about 5 minutes walk from there.

Reservations were made through LaFourchette, a service that works with TripAdvisor. I’ll write about this in detail separately.

This restaurant is very affordable and delicious.

But I was so engrossed in the conversation that I forgot to leave a note of my impressions of the food.

I’ll bet it was delicious!

The dessert was a little unsatisfying…

For the wine, we chose the 2005 Château de Lamarque here.

I ordered it because it was a good year, 2005, and it was reasonably priced.

Let’s see, what kind of flavor was it (I forgot…)? I think it had a good weight and a good balance of sweetness and sourness.

The dinner started at 8:30 p.m., but before I knew it, it was already 11:00 p.m. At this point, I said goodbye to the two people who were going to join us, and walked back to our hotels with Samurai-kun, whose hotel was in the same direction.

It was a rich and fulfilling experience from day one.

Tomorrow is the day before the race and we will head to Pauillac to pick up our numbers.

(DAY 1 ENDS)