Bordeaux
So, Leslie and I arrived in Bordeaux around 5 pm on Saturday, April 16. After taking a bus to the center of town, we trudged through the streets with our packs only to find that the hostel we'd booked had given our room away. It all turned out for the best, though, because they found us other (nicer) accommodations, and we paid the same price. We got a private room with an en suite bathroom and shower, and we even got a television with MTV!
Saturday afternoon we wandered around the town a bit and had a coffee at a little outdoor cafe. Our coffee was served with a miniature canele, a dome-shaped caramel pastry common in the region. We had dinner that night in a restaurant on the rue Ste-Catherine (my street), then had a couple of drinks at an Irish pub. Honestly, we were quite beat from going out every night in Lyon for the previous two weeks or so, and we ended up going home really early. The highlights of our evening were a bizarre head sculpture on the wall of the pub and a hilarious drink menu full of horrible English translations, which Leslie took home as a souvenir.
The next day, one of the only rainy days of our vacation, we walked around the town sight-seeing. We saw the cathedrale St-Andre and the Tour Pey-Berland, a tower that stands just next to the church. Next we made a long trek to the Porte d'Aquitaine in Place de la Victoire, one of the many "ceremonial entrances" to the city. It's really just a large archway standing in the middle of the square. We saw the eglise St-Michel, the biggest gothic church in Bordeaux. Its steeple, which is separated from the main structure, is referred to as la Fleche (the arrow). We walked through the Porte de Bourgogne, one of the more impressive official entrances to the city and saw the Pont de Pierre. The pont is the oldest bridge in Bordeaux over the Garonne river; it was built on Napoleon's orders.
We walked along the river until we reached the Porte Cailhau, at which point we veered back toward the center of the city and found a tourist office. There we discovered, unfortunately, that it was still too early in the year to take a tour of any of the vineyards. We did, however, get a better map of the city, complete with a suggested walking tour. We followed the walking tour up through Bordeaux, passing the eglise St-Pierre, Place de la Bourse, le Grand Theatre, and la Maison du Vin (the house of wine, which turned out only to be a store, closed on Sundays). After an exhaustive search, we found Bordeaux's Notre Dame, hidden in the middle of several large buildings. (In case you're wondering, Notre Dame in French means "Our Lady;" there's a church with that name in nearly every town in France.) We walked through la Place des Quinconces and saw the Monument aux Girondins a la Republique. We also saw the jardin publique, a former royal park, the Temple des Chartrons, some Turkish baths which were so unimpressive they should not have even been marked on the map, and the eglise St-Louis. A private party was going on aboard Croiseur le Colbert, a French battleship anchored on the banks of the river. Unfortunately we had not been invited, so we continued on our way to see the Bourse Maritime and the Grosse Cloche, the belfry of the former town hall. As we made our way around Bordeaux, we encountered a couple of interesting spectacles. The first was a band playing music on instruments constructed mainly of trash. The second was a puppeteer whose small rock star string puppet sang music while strumming a guitar. The puppeteer reminded me of a similar puppet show Bryan and I had seen in New Orleans last year, although the New Orleans puppeteer was far more impressive. He had a whole collection of musical puppets with different looks and personalities, and they all played different types of music.
Leslie and I were quite excited to see several vineyards out the window as our train went speeding out of Bordeaux. Later that night, after changing trains in Irun, Spain, we had to share a couchette on our night train to Madrid with the creepiest guy ever. He was laying in his bed with his pants undone when we arrived. He stared at us all evening long, tried to smoke inside our tiny couchette (Leslie and I did not permit that!), snored more loudly than I ever thought possible, and looked very interested in stealing our stuff while he thought I was sleeping. He and another slightly less creepy Spanish guy had a lovely conversation about Leslie and I. Leslie, who has some limited Spanish skills, could make out that they were saying we were all alone and didn't speak Spanish.
Saturday afternoon we wandered around the town a bit and had a coffee at a little outdoor cafe. Our coffee was served with a miniature canele, a dome-shaped caramel pastry common in the region. We had dinner that night in a restaurant on the rue Ste-Catherine (my street), then had a couple of drinks at an Irish pub. Honestly, we were quite beat from going out every night in Lyon for the previous two weeks or so, and we ended up going home really early. The highlights of our evening were a bizarre head sculpture on the wall of the pub and a hilarious drink menu full of horrible English translations, which Leslie took home as a souvenir.
The next day, one of the only rainy days of our vacation, we walked around the town sight-seeing. We saw the cathedrale St-Andre and the Tour Pey-Berland, a tower that stands just next to the church. Next we made a long trek to the Porte d'Aquitaine in Place de la Victoire, one of the many "ceremonial entrances" to the city. It's really just a large archway standing in the middle of the square. We saw the eglise St-Michel, the biggest gothic church in Bordeaux. Its steeple, which is separated from the main structure, is referred to as la Fleche (the arrow). We walked through the Porte de Bourgogne, one of the more impressive official entrances to the city and saw the Pont de Pierre. The pont is the oldest bridge in Bordeaux over the Garonne river; it was built on Napoleon's orders.
We walked along the river until we reached the Porte Cailhau, at which point we veered back toward the center of the city and found a tourist office. There we discovered, unfortunately, that it was still too early in the year to take a tour of any of the vineyards. We did, however, get a better map of the city, complete with a suggested walking tour. We followed the walking tour up through Bordeaux, passing the eglise St-Pierre, Place de la Bourse, le Grand Theatre, and la Maison du Vin (the house of wine, which turned out only to be a store, closed on Sundays). After an exhaustive search, we found Bordeaux's Notre Dame, hidden in the middle of several large buildings. (In case you're wondering, Notre Dame in French means "Our Lady;" there's a church with that name in nearly every town in France.) We walked through la Place des Quinconces and saw the Monument aux Girondins a la Republique. We also saw the jardin publique, a former royal park, the Temple des Chartrons, some Turkish baths which were so unimpressive they should not have even been marked on the map, and the eglise St-Louis. A private party was going on aboard Croiseur le Colbert, a French battleship anchored on the banks of the river. Unfortunately we had not been invited, so we continued on our way to see the Bourse Maritime and the Grosse Cloche, the belfry of the former town hall. As we made our way around Bordeaux, we encountered a couple of interesting spectacles. The first was a band playing music on instruments constructed mainly of trash. The second was a puppeteer whose small rock star string puppet sang music while strumming a guitar. The puppeteer reminded me of a similar puppet show Bryan and I had seen in New Orleans last year, although the New Orleans puppeteer was far more impressive. He had a whole collection of musical puppets with different looks and personalities, and they all played different types of music.
Leslie and I were quite excited to see several vineyards out the window as our train went speeding out of Bordeaux. Later that night, after changing trains in Irun, Spain, we had to share a couchette on our night train to Madrid with the creepiest guy ever. He was laying in his bed with his pants undone when we arrived. He stared at us all evening long, tried to smoke inside our tiny couchette (Leslie and I did not permit that!), snored more loudly than I ever thought possible, and looked very interested in stealing our stuff while he thought I was sleeping. He and another slightly less creepy Spanish guy had a lovely conversation about Leslie and I. Leslie, who has some limited Spanish skills, could make out that they were saying we were all alone and didn't speak Spanish.