Back to France – Bordeaux

On By Lauren Case
Le miroir d’eau

I’m back! No good excuses for not blogging for so long, but I’ll make them anyway. In short, we had a few weeks of lovely visitors, I took a lengthy wine class (which I had to study for!), we took a road trip around the UK, then flew to Bordeaux. I’ve got a lot of blog catching up to do! I’ll start with where we are now, and then over the next week or so, circle back through the UK fun I’m behind on.

Today is day two in Bordeaux. It’s 78° and wonderful. (We came from Scotland, where it was closer to 50°….)

Bordeaux!

Despite having never been here and knowing nothing about the place, except that we like the wine, spending September in Bordeaux was one of the only things that we knew we wanted to do before leaving on our trip. And here we are! We wanted to come because in 2017 we were in Burgundy for the grape harvest, which was so fun we thought we’d try to see it in another wine region. Bordeaux is really different from Burgundy. It’s huge. Well, 250,000 people huge.

It looks a lot like Paris. A river runs through the City, there are places (plazas) everywhere, and the buildings all look the same. According to Dan, these guys had the the architecture first, and Paris was modeled after Bordeaux. It’s also nice and warm – it should be in the 80s most of the time we are here. Here are some scenes from around town.

  • Opera
  • Boulevard along river
  • Strange. . .
  • Cruise ship came in last night with lots of British people on it.

There are disappointingly few patisseries here though . . . . Bordeaux is home of the canelé, a pastry that, luckily for me, is not one of my favorites. It would be difficult if this town was filled with the St. Honore. But, since I’m here, I might as well search out the best canelés and see if they can change my mind. More on this after I do some canelé research.

Canelés

Our flat is at the very top of a beautiful building that looks out onto Place du Palais. A lovely little square, with a cool gate/castle at one end, and the Garonne River just beyond that.

This is the gate/caste – Porte Cailhau – looking great all lit up. This was originally the entrance to a caste, and was built in 1493.

Views from our flat below. 93 steps to get up to here! That is by far the most yet on this trip (at home we have 53, which I will never complain about again). But look at the view!

We’ve decided we’d like to live in the flat across the Place. The one with the balcony. It’s probably only 20 stairs to get there.

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