Our First 4 Days Living in Bordeaux, France | Home Exchange Adventures

#zekeandterri #midlifetravel #travelover50 #homeexchange #bordeauxfrance
We kicked off our 4-week stay in Bordeaux, France in April 2025 with a home exchange in the charming Fondaudège neighborhood. 🚊☕🥖

In this video, we take you along for our first four days, from arriving by train from Paris and settling into our temporary home, to exploring the local shops, grabbing fresh baguettes, dealing with internet issues (hello, coworking space!), and enjoying our first walks through the beautiful Jardin Public.

These first few days taught us a lot about what we need to make a long-term stay truly livable including fast internet, easy access to transit, green spaces, and great food!

✨ Watch to the end to see our favorite park and hear what’s on our must-have list for our next month-long stay.

Related videos: Dordogne and Corrèze, Toulouse, Arcachon, and Angoulême!

Thanks for following along on our European adventure!

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🚁Navigating our lives and the world, mostly together. 🚁

00:00 Bordeaux Home Exchange: Settling In
00:22 Arriving in Bordeaux / getting keys
02:00 Internet issues! First pharmacy trip
03:11 Getting grounded at yoga
04:07 Shopping on Rue Fondaudège
05:02 Just another day / Jardin Public
06:40 Challenges and triumphs as we settle in
08:46 Coworking at Hemera
09:17 Baguette culture in California?
09:56 Jardin Public

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[Music] Back in April, after leaving Paris, we took the train to Bordeaux for a four-week home exchange where we plan to live and work. In this video, we share our settling in experience where we get off to a rather bumpy start. Subscribe to our channel for more Zeke and Terry adventures. So, we just got out of our boat from the train station cuz we couldn’t figure out how to get the TVM app to work. We’ll figure that out in a day or so. And the first thing we have to do is get the keys. And they’re in this casino, which is like a convenience store, I guess. And then we walk a block away. I have a a code to get some keys. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There you go. Now, see here. So, we try that one. No. Let me try that one. It works. There we go. Okay. [Music] Once Zeke figured out the key situation, which ended up being a challenge every time we unlocked the doors, we did a quick tour of the place, dropped our bags, and headed back out to get a transit pass and groceries. We were still jet-lagged and needed a snack and a beverage before going to the tourism office and then the TBM office to get our transit passes for the month. The main street near our place was Rufon and it’s a really cute street with shops, restaurants, and quite a few salons and barber shops. [Music] We picked up some basic items like a baguette and a sweet treat, coffee, cream, and yogurt before having dinner at a local Poké Ball place and calling it a night. [Music] Once again, Terry was incredibly impressive with her ability to speak French and navigate technology in France. And we got ourselves a hot spot that hopefully is going to smooth out our technological uh issues uh for the rest of the trip, not just while we’re here in Bordeaux. Yeah, good job. Thank you. [Music] That was a very productive pharmacy stop. Oh my gosh. Um because we just did carryons, so I didn’t bring any like face creams and serums, but I wanted to go into a pharmacy and in French try to get it’s saywalk. But you did incredible. So I got some natural products. The gal was super friendly and she gave me some little samples of stuff afterwards. Little had little presents. Okay. Well, we think we have a little bit of time to grab uh some bite to eat before we go do yoga and get ourselves really grounded. You okay? I’m feeling a little bit better. [Music] How was your fair do yoga? It was It was intoxicating in French. Yoga is just usually painful in English, but this was this was amazing. Yeah. Our instructor was Sophie. She was absolutely delightful. I would say 85% of it was in French. Uh 15% of it was in English. Um I know a lot. So that was funny. Yeah. It was I was lucky that I could kind of look under my left armpit and see the person who knew what they were doing down the road and follow them along. That was me. Oh, beyond you. The gallon pink. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the gallon pink was very helpful. But, uh, anyway, I think we’re going to come back and do this again. It’s a little expensive, but I think it’s worth it maybe twice a week at least for me. Well, you call that a success? Absolutely. We got promage, champagne, a produ, uh, uh, we got berries and vegetables and toilet paper and paper towels and some yaort ya yogurt. Yogurt. And we got some incredible um paella. Oh, we had paella for lunch at the restaurant just right back there. Great little uh little corner of the world. Yeah, they also sell um uh fu deare uh seafood basically. So, we can go back and purchase seafood from there later. But tonight, snacky snack dinner. It’s already 4:00. Yeah. And I need a nap. [Music] This looks like a pretty park. It’s an absolutely beautiful park. This morning has been a bit of an data internet adventure. Uh so we successfully acquired from Orange yesterday a hotspot box type thing. Today’s adventure was to go recharge um after going to two box in a wrong store and then another Tobac. The guy in the last Tbach was like what we bought was terrible and may as well use my phone but then I’d have to get stuff through Verizon. You have your Aerolo. [Music] We found a dog park. No pets allowed in the home exchange. [Music] Well, good morning. We are heading out into Bordeaux on our continued settling in tour as we’re going to call it initially. So we’ve settled where transportation gets us, local transportation, which is Primo. Uh we’ve settled where our main shopping area is relation to here, which is outstanding location. And we’re still working out the internet. Uh doing what I do with video editing. I need a lot of data. So, we found a co-working space that’s only like 2 three blocks from here that’s supposed to have highspeed internet and it’s uh 10 to6 a day for access and they have most important thing for you. Um I’m curious to know cuz we’re heading out at about 10:00 in the morning. Um we had found a workaround with an airbox. Um but it’s not a great workaround. So, um I’m looking forward to being able to work more seamlessly on my laptop to get through a bunch of stuff today and maybe we can go on an adventure tomorrow. Um but I’m curious. I mean, are we going to be able to leave our stuff there to go get some lunch and then go back? So, me, I’m always thinking through the logistics of how this stuff is going to work. So, the good news is it’s really not too far from here. It’s not terribly expensive. Um it’s all part of the experiment as I keep track of how much everything costs on this trip. and uh we’ve not had to spend this much on internet and phone etc. I think we’re settling in nicely. We still have yet to cook a meal here. You made some eggs this morning for the first time. Um we did buy a rotisserie chicken last night and then we had some beautiful heirloom tomatoes that we uh mixed up with some basil and some olive oil and some salt and we sat out here on the patio and had dinner last night. Ah, this was part of what the adventure was going to be all about is like how do you figure out how to live someplace for let’s say 4 weeks at a time. We now have friends who are reading my piloting your life in flight as well as our postcards from the road. So you can go ahead and sign up on our website at zantary.com. Some of them are going to be doing similar things in provenance and they’re kind of tracking what we’re doing to see what kind of problems they can get ahead of. Good news is the co-working place is workable. Mhm. It’s actually pretty nice. Nice vibe. Yeah. Little expensive for just going by there, but maybe we can do some half days and and get what we need done and then get out of there. So, that’s good. And then we had a lovely uh outside drink at what becoming, I think, one of our favorite little downtown spots over there. The fish. Yeah, it’s bone marrow. Bone marrow. And then we grabbed a fresh warm baguette. Oh, it was still hot. I mean, we were talking to our son Adam back home and he’s like, “Oh, I wish we could find a place that’s a French uh bonerie here in California that has baguette culture where you where they bake their baguette so they’re ready for people to pick up on the way home from uh picking up their kids from school or on the way home from work. But now we’re going to go for a walk in the beautiful park that’s just a block away and enjoy that for the evening and then wrap it up.” And uh well, we need to plan our weekend cuz we’re looking at going up to Dordonia for the weekend. But we do need to do a load of laundry tonight, right? So, but first, we’re going to go for a walk cuz it’s just gorgeous out here. As you can see, we eventually settled into the place and realized that when we do this again, we need to allow for 3 to 4 days at the front end to make it livable and workable. We’ve updated our list of requirements that include verifying highspeed internet or finding a local co-working space. We want to be near a park or a green space like the Jardan Publique. We also want to be near a public transit spot and maybe a gym or a yoga place. The four weeks flew by with field trips to Dordonia and Korez, Tuloo, Arashon, and Angulm, which you could see in related videos. We still love Bordeaux and cannot wait to go back. Where should we do our next long-term stay? [Music]