Bordeaux: Part 1

Well, well, it has been a long time, hasn’t it?! It seems like just yesterday the leaves were starting to take on their fiery autumn hues, signalling the start of perhaps Paris’ prettiest season, and now – suddenly – it’s the end of November. Trips 12 and 13 are now nothing but memories, and (to quote a good friend of mine) “we're rolling downhill towards Christmas with all the inevitability of a hamster in a snowball”. I gauge the start of winter by a small tree on the complex where I work. It welcomes me to work every day, and is the most beautiful sight in the autumn, being a spectacular shock of deep reds, luminescent oranges and flaming yellows. When its colours fade and the last leaf finally, grudgingly, yields its hold – as it did this week – autumn is over, and winter has begun.

I make no secret of the fact that I’m solar-powered, and so the shortening days, the grey skies and the chilling winds trigger in me the urge to hibernate. In fact, the last few weekends have seen me undertaking activities that can only be interpreted as nesting. It’s in times like these, when the sidewalks become slick with an imperceptible layer of frost, when the sun shies away behind a deep blanket of grey, when the Saclay plateau shrouds itself in a thick, early-morning fog, I find it helps my soul to think of sunnier, warmer times. My travels this year have brought me to many a sunny destination, but no trip quite captures the essence of summer serenity than my August trip (#9) to Bordeaux and the surrounding countryside. During this holiday, we spent time in the city of Bordeaux itself, as well as several stunning days in the wine country near St. Emilion, and took day trips to the Médoc wine region and the small beach town of Arcachon.

There are few places I have been to in France that I haven’t liked, but Bordeaux and its surroundings are spectacular. In order to truly do this trip justice, I cannot possibly condense the week down into one post, so what follows is part 1 of a Bordelaise trilogy.

We begin with the city of Bordeaux itself. When you’ve lived in Paris for a while, surrounded predominantly by 19^th century buildings, the first thing that will strike you about Bordeaux is the 18^th century architecture: to the layperson, it’s all at once similar and quaintly distinct from what surrounds me every day. The streets are smaller and windier, there are castle-like arch gates at various entry points to the city, and the Place de la Bourse (link in French) is breathtaking, particularly at night.  

Royal gate - Late 13th Century

Place de la Bourse at night

Bordeaux is known as the City of Art and History and is, literally, littered with old churches, museums and galleries. It, rather famously, lies along the Way of St James (aka Santiago de Compostella), and various markers around the city show the route of this pilgrimage. It is also, absolutely, the sort of city where you might find giant sparkly purple crocodile heads rising out of the ground (your guess is as good as mine), and giant stone turtles in the street.

Giant Sparkly Purple Crocodile Head

Giant Turtle with Man on Back

We visited a number of churches whilst in Bordeaux, but the most notable was the Basilique Saint Michel de Bordeaux, famous for its clock tower (aside from being just utterly beautiful). We were actually fortunate enough to be up the tower when the bells sounded. This is a wonderful spectacle, but also may make your brain rattle inside your skull a little bit, and running down the spiral staircase to the bells will not help. The tower offers unparalleled views of the city, however, so is totally worth the disorienting trip up and down.

Beautiful Bordeaux

Beautiful Bordeaux

Basilique Saint Michel de Bordeaux, from the clock tower

This church is located in one of the poorer areas of the city. A wonderful scrap-market is held outside most days, where you can – quite literally – buy just about anything. The base of the tower also routinely plays bedroom to a number of homeless people, but there is nothing sinister or unwelcoming in this part of the city (or any part of the city that we saw, to be honest).  The clock tower is also famous for having housed a number of mummies in its crypt. The mummies no longer reside there; however, you are welcome to descend into the crypt, listen to some scary music, and view photos of the mummies strategically placed where they used to lie.

The Crypt

The Clock Tower

We stayed at the Etap hotel Centre Bastide, on the opposite side of the river Garonne to the main city. It’s a good bet if you’re on a budget, and perfectly adequate as long as you’re okay with a shower contained in what can only be described as a plastic wet room with no appropriate place to hang your towel. We had this view out of our window, though:

So every day, we had to cross the Garonne River, via Pont de Pierre, to get to the main city. This brings me to the most stunning fact about Bordeaux (to my arguably incredibly geeky mind, at least). Every day, I crossed the river with unrealistic excitement, for one simple reason: The Garonne river, pictured below, flows in both directions depending on the tides. Let me reiterate. Here you have ariver that, seemingly on a whim, will change from flowing full force downstream – as most rivers do – to flowing full force upstream – which rivers should never do! I’m guessing at this point, that most of you are thinking “So? What’s the big deal?” This puts you in the same camp as my trusty travel companion, who thought I was utterly bizarre for being so fascinated. But the big deal is that THE RIVER CHANGES DIRECTION! And it’s pretty spectacular when it does. Sometimes it looks stagnant; sometimes it looks like it’s flowing in both directions simultaneously; and sometimes it just blatantly and carelessly flows upstream. (And yes, I absolutely, at one point, shouted at it “Do you realise you’re flowing the wrong way?!”) Amazing!

The Mighty, Bi-directional, Garonne!

Pont de Pierre, at night

Bordeaux is wonderful, and absolutely worth a visit. In 2 pages of writing, I haven’t even come close to touching on all the places we visited and sights we saw. I haven’t even mentioned wine yet, and isn’t that what Bordeaux is most famous for??!! Nor have I mentioned the time when we saw a film being shot outside the cathedral in central Bordeaux. (Sigh, so many stories, not enough time!) But, I’m afraid that to learn the rest you’ll have to visit Bordeaux yourselves.  Or, at very least, you’ll have to send me out there to visit again, in order to refresh my memory!

I close this chapter of our adventures with a shot of an amusing ad we saw posted everywhere in the region. It was part of a campaign of amusing summer ads for an independent newspaper, and this was my favourite.

Translation: "You didn't read my article on the dangers of the sun!"