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.

Where do I start?? I thought I had experienced suffering before in my life but nothing comes close to living in Disney village!

Perhaps I should back up a few days. London. My second London gig was a far cry from the first. Armed with my guitar and a few CDs, I hopped onto the tube, made a change at a crammed station at peak hour and found myself on the wrong tube. Having figured this out, gotten off and changed to the correct train without too much time lost, I declared myself a tube expert.

I was pleasantly surprised to walk into the venue- The Metropolitan and find an intimate upstairs area full of tables and large, deep couches with a tiny stage nestled into one end of the room. The gig was being organised by the lovely and talented Rodney Fisher (Goodshirt).

Rodney’s honest lyrics and soothing delivery captivated the small but appreciative crowd. So much so that by the time it was my turn, I felt quite intimidated and took the stage quite reluctantly. But with the help of a decent pour of Scotch by the kind barman, I played an intimate, gentle gig - the type where you sit down facing a front row that you could touch if you reached out beyond the mic.

The next day I repacked my oversized suitcase and Haydn, Stas and I headed for the Eurostar train station. After a few difficulties proving my identity without my stolen credit card, we piled onto a big train that was to take us under the Channel to the city of Paris.

After arriving happily into Paris Nord, what followed was a long and confusing ramble through Parisian tube stations. We happened to be travelling at peak hour once again and the chaos was increased by language barriers. The final train to Euro Disney was a double-decker train and we stood in the tiny entrance with our piles of luggage, receiving French glares and curses for 40 minutes. The entrance to Euro Disney Village loomed before us, cruelly placed between us and our hotel. On aching feet, we hobbled onward and suddenly found ourselves in a strange world of giant mushrooms, families of painted skeletons and bounding cartoon characters. It was Halloween of course. Not only were we confronted by the sickening neon reality of Disney Land, but hundreds of ghosts, gouls, witches and zombies of all sizes and shapes also filled the cartoon streets. Most units of scary creatures came in the form of two small running ghosts, warily followed by two taller monsters – a Frankenstein’s monster with a zombie bride pushing a pram containing a tiny ghost baby. Scattered throughout the Halloween revellers were bemused Buddhist nuns and monks on route to the same Dharma festival as us, walking slowly amongst madness in robes, blending into public more than they were used to.

The madness didn’t stop when we arrived at the hotel we were to be sleeping at during our week-long Buddhist festival. When we finally got to the oasis of our room, we had to sit down and seriously contemplate whether or not we had in fact just seen Mickey Mouse dancing with a pumpkin-headed man, to the tune of ‘We Will Rock You’ in our hotel foyer!