Bordeaux

We decided to fit in a few days to see Bordeaux (Bx), including Julia’s house, and to reconnect with Julia’s friends Florence and Jean-Mi.  Bx is a fantastic city, and we fully understand why Julia has decided to settle there in the future.

The town sits on both sides of the incredibly wide Garonne river.

The beautiful old Pont de Pierre is the primary pedestrian and tram crossing

We arrived Monday afternoon and had dinner at a bar a vin recommended by Jean-Mi and Julia.  The bar a vins in Bx seem unique to me.  They focus on the wines not the food and add in tapas style options as accompaniments.  Great wine, great service, great charcuterie, great baked camembert.

We visited the Cite du vin on Tuesday.  This is a really new museum inspired by Bx’s wine industry (make what you will of the architecture).

We’d read and heard a lot about this museum and were super excited about visiting.  We spent many many hours there, enjoyed it and learned a lot but I were slightly disappointed.  The museum has gone for breadth rather then depth, and I was wanting to know quite a lot more.  As Flo put it, they’ve designed it for people who know nothing about wine.  They have invested heavily in technology to tell the story of wine, which is one reason why I think that they should have been able to provide more detailed information than they did.  Also, not all of the technology was working.  Hardly surprising!  Finally, we paid a little extra to have a glass of wine from the observation level at the top of the building, and they were extremely stingy with their portions (a fatal error given this is likely the final impression you are left with).

Mass interaction with choose your own adventure technology kind of clashes.  Plus the headphones look silly.

We took a break in the middle of the day to have lunch at the state-of-the-art market hall, Les Halles Bacalan, just opposite the museum.  It was uber chic.

Wednesday, we spent cycling around Bx with the best guides ever Flo and Jean-Mi.  For those of you who have heard all of our previous holiday cycling disasters, let me just say that Bx is very flat.

We went everywhere, but some of the highlights include the following:

-        Julia’s house (from the street)

-        Le Fleche St Michel (including an early lunch in the square facing it).

-        Cathedral St Andre (where Eleanor of Aquitaine was married (the first time, in 1137)).

-        Seeing some of the Gillet Jaune protesters.  It was Labour Day Public Holiday so there were big protests in the morning that we stayed away from.  Streets were blocked off in many places and the police presence was heavy.  By the afternoon protester remnants were still hanging around some of the public squares.

-        Espace de Quinconces.  This massive public space used to hold big concerts.  This day it was an antiques and plant market.

Girondins Monument

-        Riding over the Pont Jacques Chaban-Dalmus.  It is the longest vertical lift bridge in Europe.  It was raised to let a cruise ship in to berth alongside the quay while we were there (coincidently the same ship that dropped anchor next to us in the Caribbean whilst on our Panama Canal cruise in 2016).  The bridge closes for 2 hours each time it is raised and lowered.

This got under that

Taller than the city buildings, and this is the smallest ship in the Holland America fleet (the newest one takes 4 times the number passengers!)

There were marvelous things to see wherever we rode.

Port Cailhau

Porte d'Aquitaine

Grosse cloche

To finish off the day we all had dinner at a funky Corsican Tapas restaurant.

On Thursday we met Flo for lunch.  She works at this amazing place called ‘Darwin’.  It is a former military barracks that has been redeveloped as a green economic hub.  Flo has a desk in one of the co-working spaces, which she gave us a tour of.  It was spacious, light filled and full of ‘les start-ups’.  The hub includes an organic food restaurant (our omelettes were yummy) and grocery, a wellness centre, an urban farm and of course a skate park.  The redevelopment was the idea of 3 friends and it was largely privately funded.  I would love to work there.

The back side of a Gorilla in case you were wondering

Apparently, Bx has been going through a major urban redevelopment during Alain Juppe’s tenure as mayor.  A lot of public spaces have been created and the centre ville is largely car free (with a great new tram network and cycling paths to replace them).  This also meant that it was relatively easy to ride around on bikes.

The river banks have seen the old trading warehouses torn down and replaced with fantastic public spaces.  This 'mirror of water' is a popular choice on a sunny day.

We went to the Musee D’Aquitaine in the afternoon and then met Flo and Jean-Mi for a dinner boat cruise.  The boat travels down the Garonne River towards the confluence with the Dordogne River, and back.  We got great views of Bx as the sun went down.  The food was better than expected for this type of thing and the wine and company were excellent (as expected).

Jean-Mi, Flo and David

Bonus nonsense!

Did you know that the French word for the colour burgundy is bordeaux?  But Burgundy is the English name for the region Bourgorgne in the North West of France, whereas the region Bordeaux is on the East coast (and in English we refer to its wine as Bordeaux, or historically Claret).  Confused?  Try shopping in France for clothing that is a deep red colour.