We’re back from our last minute trip to France. We spent 9 days total, 4 in Paris and 5 in Bordeaux in the south part of France. We went to Bordeaux to visit our friend Luis to celebrate his 40th birthday. There we joined our friends from LA, Vincent and Cecilia who also went there to visit him. Cecilia is Luis’ half sister.

We took the TGV train to Bordeaux from Paris. It was about ¢60 each ticket and it was a 3 hour trip. The TGV a.k.a. bullet train is supposed to be the fastest train design on earth going at speeds of 200mph/320kph. The TGV connects the different french cities as well as neighboring countries like the UK, Italy and Switzerland.

I had such a hard time making phone calls in France. Here’s what I learned, I’m sure it will be useful to someone.

The easiest way to make an international call in France is to follow the instructions on public phones and using a credit card. Every pay phone has instructions. It’s the easiest way but not the cheapest. The cheapest way to call is to purchase an international calling card (Telecart International) at a newsstand or grocery store. I bought one for ¢7.50 that came with 600 minutes, but it took me forever to figure out how to use it because all the instructions were in french. Once I figured out the steps to using the card I got stuck in the phone number part, a task that is harder than it should. Once ready to dial I needed to do 011 before the US area code and phone number. Or was it 001? Oh well, one of those two.

For local calls, the phone booths in France are not coined operated, you need a phone card called the Telecart that can be purchased in magazine stands, grocery stores and just about everywhere. You slide in a card and dial your number. To call a french number in france, you dial a 10 digit number. The first two are the city code. A number in Paris is 01-XX-XX-XX-XX because 01 is the city code for Paris. When dialing from another country you replace the initial 0 with the country code which is 33. So for me to call my friend from the US to Paris, I dial 33-1-XX-XX-XX-XX.

The Paris book we took, Rick Steve’s Paris, had a whole section on making phone calls that was essential to our trip. Although it wasn’t until we got to our friend Luis that I really learned to use it.

I was never able to get a hold of my friend on the phone before we got to Bordeaux. But I had his address so we bought a map and figured out how to take the bus to his place. Once we got there we knocked on the door but nobody was home. So there we were, with our luggage in hand on the street and nowhere to go. Luckily there was a nice little hotel just a block away so we checked in to a room with a view.

After we booked into the hotel we went out to explore the city and grab a bite to eat.

this is one of 5(i thinik) doors of bordeaux. in the old days, these doors would close when the town was under attack.

After dinner and some sight seeing we tried Luis again and luckily this time they were home.

more pictures to come soon…