Trials, Tribulations and Toilet Paper - On the Road in Bordeaux

It was HOT in Bordeaux

90-ish degrees and HUMID. Being a born-and-raised Northern Californian, I don't handle humidity that well. My partner Cory and I were in Bordeaux to buy wine. LOTS of it. We'd been tasting at a negociant (pretty much how you buy Bordeaux) all day, we were chilling at our Best Western, trying to shake the buzz off (hey, you taste 80+ wines in a sitting, it's pretty much impossible not to get loopy) because we had dinner (and another epic tasting of samples) at another negociant's house that night. We got dressed up a bit (tucked in a dress shirt, put on my painful dress shoes), and I was ready to get an Uber. "No," said my hyper-athletic partner, "Let's just walk since it's close, like a mile." OK. Did I mention HOT? Humid? By the twenty-block mark, like a kid on a road trip, I said, "Dood. How much further?" "Ah, yeah, it's a ways. I had the wrong address. Oh, and we are late, so we need to jog". I walk-jogged in my toe-crushing, awful shoes, pulled my shirt out, and did my best. It was awful. SO HOT. We made it. I was disgusting, an embarrassment, soaked. I'm a flip flops and Weezer T-shirt kinda guy, and I was just....wet. I tucked my Brooks Brothers knockoff dress shirt back in, and we went in.

This was when I realized that in most places in Europe, there's no AC.

It's rarely that hot. I was flowing like the mighty Gironde river nearby. I could not stop. We sat down in this elegant, vintage home with high ceilings, luxurious and gracious like so many places in France, and I could. not. stop. sweating. There was no breeze, no fan, no nothing, just more humidity. I gushed sweat. I was planning the demise of my partner Cory in our crappy hotel in his sleep.

Flustered, I got up and went to the bathroom. I breathed. I chanted calming mantras. I went to the sink to splash cold water (yes! Salvation!) on myself. SACRE BLEU, there was no TOWEL! No paper towel, nothing! I panicked. I was soaking. I started to sweat again. My pulse was racing. I had already been gone too long, and they were kindly waiting for me. So I did it. I dabbed myself with TP. Horrifying, yes, but there you go. What else could I do?

I came out and sat down next to Cory, but not close enough to sock him hard in the ear or stab him with a pencil. I was across from our host. The roaring Gironde started escaping from my pores again. Our host started talking about the business, and as I nodded and prayed and did yoga breathing, he said in his French accent, "I'm sorry, Meester Bleeeker, you have some...some....some....things on your face."

I looked over at Cory who did the deer-in-the-headlights horror look.

He tried to suppress a laugh. I considered smashing this guy's living room up with Cory's lifeless body. "You got, like, white stuff all over your face." I ran into the bathroom, and to my own horror, I literally had like 478 tiny pieces of TP stuck all over. I could hear my heart pounding now, my blood rushing. Could I take a shower? Jump out the window? Find a hair dryer? At least it was an excuse to use more cold water that I desperately needed. I summoned some courage and walked out and asked if I could please have a towel. In the minute that followed, I realized at least now everyone was on the same page of my misery. They patiently waited, I cleaned myself up, putting my shame into a dark place for later reflection and therapy.

We tasted 25 wines, had a great dinner...

and the next night my picture-of-health friend and partner Cory Wagner ordered THIS um...CLASSIC at a lovely and dare I say romantic restaurant in a castle. Man did I get my sweet revenge!!! Click the link, but let's just say that The Telegraph writes that it "looks, smells, and tastes as if it should be in a lavatory," while CNN reports it has "an easily identifiable aroma of decay." Yup, they're talkin' about poop. Happy travels!!