A summer in France.

The talented Ms Beatrice Martin of Coeur de Pirate. Her songs were the soundtrack of my latest Eurotrip as I traversed across the meadows of France. There is nothing like a chick singing in French to help you better appreciate French scenery.

I was wandering around the outside of the cathedral of St Andre, probably the most imposing cathedral in the town square of Bordeaux. I remember this particular memory well, because it was a blustery day, with winds that whipped light threads of rain across your face, threads so cold they stung your face like little needles.

I had just concluded my tour of the insides of the cathedral. While it was spectacular, I was experiencing what could best be described as "church fatigue", the sensation you get after seeing one too many frescos and silent depictions of the crucification of Christ, that nothing else in the form of grandiose Gothic architecture could do more for you. It was perhaps telling that I found the Dutch tour guide more interesting than anything else in the cathedral. In an old stone building of cold marbled grey, she was tall and blonde. She reminded me exactly of the eponymous Dutch Lady, so much that I could imagine her wearing that milkmaid get up. And I don't mean that in a perverse way.

The view of St Andre's cathedral from the belltower. I distinctly remember thinking it resembled a spider.

Just before that, I had scaled the belltower of the church, a building separately housed from the cathedral because a bishop of ages past had deemed that the chiming of the giant bell in the tower would rock the foundations of the church.

The belltower was tall and narrow, and it offered a view over the arrondissements of Bordeaux that reflected a strange amalgamation of the old and new, where the old quarters of Bordeaux extended away from your eyes to be replaced by more modern looking metallic and glass structures closer to the horizon. It was a treat to be savoured, especially so given it was free, since the lady at the counter had mistakenly assumed that I was an overseas student and allowed me free admission to what would have otherwise been a rather expensive climb. I tried in vain to convince her of her mistake, but she wouldn't have it any other way. I guess you don't refuse charity when it is given. To do so would be to let down the noble intent of her actions.

The view from atop the belltower of the St Andre cathedral

Done with the views, it was a trek up a cobblestoned incline to find the next most interesting thing to see. And it was then when I was nearly totaled by a stunning French vision on a bicycle, whose appeals of "Pardon!" from behind me did not reach my ears till she was right next to me, scraping past so close I could feel the warmth of her body as she went past. And within a second, she was gone, cycling on ahead leaving a tiny gust in her wake. That was pretty much the story of every girl I met in France. Stunning visions who were gone with the wind as quickly as they appeared.

A cyclist making his way up a mountain road in the Pyrenees.

The beautiful quaint little village of Luz-St Saveur.

It was my second visit to France, and on this visit I experienced France in a much more profound way than I did before, when it was just a stop and go trip in Paris. I took long train rides across green meadows where sunflowers extended in all directions for miles, a yellow carpet meeting a clear blue sky. I visited a mountain village where the air was fresh with the light scent of dew, where time seemed to stand still because being summer, the sun rose early and never seemed to set. There was no reason to rush for anything, because there was literally nothing to do, and yet I found that I did not really mind. For once in my life it did not really matter where I was going, or what I would do next, where all that mattered was just taking in everything around you, and realising how out of the ordinary the whole experience was.

In Marseille, fishing is a respectable activity, not something carried out by shifty looking men dredging in longkangs.

The port of Marseille.

There was a port as well, in Marseille, where the very air smelled of fish, where the highlight of the local cuisine was a fish stew made by stewing several types of seafood in a pot for several days, so the resulting flavour can only be described as a epicurean explosion of the fishy kind on the palate. At the very best restaurants where they prepare this dish called bouillabaisse, you have to make your order a week in advance, because that is how long they stew it. The gourmet versions cost almost a 100 euros, a luxury of spending I did not have as a backpacker trying to experience Europe on a budget. The restaurant was located on the other side of the city too, so in the end I had to forgo that experience and settle for a dinner alongside the port.

In Marseille, I witnessed some of the best sunsets France had to offer as the last rays of warm yellow sun washed over the quickly darkening streets, atop that little church on the hill in the background centre of the picture just above this paragraph. It was also where I scrambled down the slopes of the hill quickly after the sun had set, because it got cold so rapidly it seemed that my blood would freeze in its veins as I hurried on down, buffeted by billowing gusts on the seaward side. I jumped at traffic lights waiting for the lights to change, because it seemed that I felt just a little warmer as I did that.

And I took my dinners in French restaurants where the waitresses politely tried to excuse my poor French, while I queried them on each and every single item on the menu, if only to make sure that the fish was indeed fish and not some form of chicken. Such was the state of my French that I constantly mixed up the words poulet (chicken) and poisson (fish). And it was almost comical how we both communicated haltingly, me in French and them in English.

It seemed that in every hostel I stayed in, there would be guests who had vastly different lives. One night it was a tanned California girl who worked as an English teacher in Madrid, the next it was another lady from Argentina who had just quit her job and was on a two month sabbatical in Europe. I remember her well because she had brought two gigantic suitcases full of clothes, and yet she wore the same flimsy article to sleep every night, further confirming the fact that women were a species who could not be understood.

Another night it was a reporter from Hongkong who spoke American accented English, whose wife worked as a wine reporter in Bordeaux. And then there was the 18 year old boy from America, in Europe for the first time and still very much raw and bereft of life's experiences, because in all his conversations, he would inevitably mention something his mother said.

Another night it would be an English eclipse chaser, who had the most fantastic stories about scrambling across the world exploring places where light turned into darkness, places as varied as the sands of Egypt and tiny nameless islands in the Pacific. And then there was a Peruvian girl who misplaced her contact lenses and had me scrambling all over the hostel room, probably the very first person I have ever met from Peru. And there was an Australian dude who worked as a handyman on a vineyard back in Australia just so he could save up cash and travel on the TransSiberian railway, which spanned across the whole of Russia and ended in Beijing.

It had me wondering, just where in this whole scheme of things did I fit, a Singaporean who was most certainly the oddest part of the jigsaw in this whole strange mural, who spoke English, looked Chinese and had bad French. But as the days went by it mattered less, because no matter where we all came from, we all shared a common love for adventure and experiences beyond the norm. It was the fuel that sparked a connection between all of us, different as we were, as we shared our experiences and realised that perhaps we had more in common than we ever thought possible.

And I could go on forever, because how do you put a journey of 18 days into a few hundred words, the sights, sounds, smells, experiences and places. But in a sense I'm lucky to have had all of it, because sometimes when I close my eyes, I am back there again, walking along the seaside at the coast of Marseille and smelling the tangy bent in the seaside air while watching seagulls circling schools of fishes in the sea. Climbing the mountains around the Pyrenees chasing the Tour de France, or plucking a bunch of grapes in the vineyards of Saint Emilion in Bordeaux.

Barreling down the roads in the vineyards of Saint Emilion, Bordeaux.

The village of Saint Emilion

The vehicles of the sponsors caravan in the Tour de France, throwing free stuff to the waiting crowd at the sides of the road

The cyclists of the Tour de France. The first Englishman to ever win the tour, Bradley Wiggins, is in yellow.

Of all of this, one memory still amuses me, of eating traditional Italian pizza drizzled with homemade chilli wine in a restaurant that played "Non, je ne regrette rien" (I regret nothing) by Edith Piaf. It was situated off a quiet road in Paris, where tourists walked in every few minutes to ask if they could use the toilet, only to be met with a firm no by the restauranteur. I watched as she turned away a Japanese family with several young kids in tow, a young couple very much in love, an elderly couple, and many others, emphasising firmly each time that there was a free toilet for tourists nearby. I made sure that before I left the restaurant, I did a very Singaporean thing.

I used their toilet.