Skip ahead 2 days and I’m on a train back to Paris , completely drunk and apologising to the woman seated next to me with a, “Sorry if I smell like cigarettes and wine - I’ve just been to Bordeaux…”

How did I get here? I remember leaving Paris, happy to be heading out of the big city for a couple of days to see some more of France and thinking it would be nice to try some wine from the region. Upon my arrival in Bordeaux, I was in urgent need of food and bounded into the first vegetarian friendly cafe I could find. This is where I met Katie - an American exchange student who helped me translate the menu and order some kai after watching my awkward solo attempts to communicate with the staff. That night Katie took me to a seedy Jazz bar in the rough part of town to watch a fantastic American songwriter - Emily Jane White.

After several Bordeaux reds, I wandered for hours through the old part of town, grinning at the locals drinking in outdoor bars, happy to be in a small town and to be receiving reciprocal grins.

The next day I decided it might be a good idea to do a wine tour.. since I was in Bordeaux and I had all day to spare before my gig that night. The tour guide was Veronica.. “Welcome to zah wine tour.. my name iz Veronique.”

I had armed myself with half a baguette in my bag. We set out into the amazing French countryside, past rolling hills adorned with rows of grapevines with cream-coloured chateaux overlooking them.

“..at zis time of year, zey make zah pruning…”

We drove through stone villages with the expert navigation of a seasoned bus driver twisting the enormous tour bus carefully around tight bends and threading her through painfully narrow streets.

“…zis iz from zah gravels and pebbles in zah ground…”

The autumn was obvious once out of the city.

“… depending on zee grapes, some of zee leaves are already fell down as you can see..”

Our first stop was at Chateau Gravas. The owner meet us at the gate. She had a pointy face and a bell-shaped hat and told us about her semillion/sauvignon blends with the seriousness of a judge.

We held our glasses up towards the light. We sniffed deeply. We swirled the contents. We sniffed again. We murmured words like, fruity and citrus… and finally we were allowed to taste.

Stop two featured chocolate and tobacco-flavoured reds and dry, floral whites. It also featured a slick Chateaux owner who started his tour by bragging about how many chateaux he owns and then went on to talk at great length about the inferiority of wine from any other region in the world. When I asked him what he thought of wine from New Zealand, he exclaimed that the NZ wine makers are like any others in the world - they only want to make money so they cut corners and make bad wine!

My gig that night was at La Politique - a private bar owned by a co-operative of local musicians. They were completely lovely and helpful and the venue was shabby but cool. I was tipsy when I got there but no-one minded. Katie and her American friend came and we talked about how to nail the French accent after I tried to speak French from the stage and made a hash of it.  Being a private bar meant they could smoke inside and I was assaulted by cigarette smoke for the entire night. I took refuge in the wine I had been offered as payment for the gig. The bar owners couldn’t promise me a lot of money so they offered me as much Bordeaux red as I could drink. When the gig was over, I took a place at the bar and stayed there, ranting with each of the locals in turn about bands and France and touring and food.

The next morning I woke up on a couch still wearing my dress and heels, with a blanket draped over my body and my head resting on a rolled up piece of clothing. I sat up, waited for my head to stop spinning and took in my surroundings. I was in an apartment. There was a bed in the corner with a sleeping girl in it. There was another couch that contained a blanketed guy - this one I recognised as one of the musician owners of the venue. Somehow I made it to the train station and boarded for Paris.

In two days I’d swap the French centre for the Dutch capital. I was curious to see how Amsterdam lived up to its reputation - and  whether I could imbibe as much “local culture” as I had in Bordeaux.