Bordeaux

From Amboise, we drove south and slightly west to Bordeaux, a roughly four-hour drive. Bordeaux is the sixth largest city in France and the center of one of the most famous wine regions in the world. They have been making wine here since the 8^th century and the city center is on the UNESCO World Heritage list as "an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble" of the 18th century. It is a beautiful city situated on the Garonne River in southwestern France, a mere 150 miles from northern Spain.

This will be our home for the week and I had made a reservation through AirBnB at an apartment very near the Place de la Bourse which sits on the Garonne River to welcome all to Bordeaux. In this part of the city, no cars are allowed so we parked in an underground garage and carried a few of our belongings to the apartment to meet our host, Thierry.

Place de la Bourse

The apartment is located on the fourth floor of a five story building and has no elevator. Now this might not seem like such a challenge except the ceiling heights are 13 ft and climbing three stories up involves 90 stairs. By the time we arrive at the front door to our apartment to greet Theirry, both Liz and I need to catch our breath before saying bon jour. Thierry then gives us a tour of the apartment, which is a rather broken up space reflecting its original construction back to the 1700’s and the many changes that have happened since then. Some rooms, like the living and dining spaces are quite large, while others, like the bathrooms, kitchens and bedrooms are quite small. The furnishings are eclectic and don’t give the immediate sense of “home”.

After a few tips on where to shop, what to see and where to go around Bordeaux, Thierry says "au revior" and leaves. I then head back to the car to the retrieve the remaining luggage – two large duffle bags each weighing about 50 lbs. Wheeling these over 100m of cobblestones streets wasn’t so difficult, but carrying them up 90 stairs, one at a time, was truly a workout. By the time I had brought up the second duffle, I was pretty exhausted.

By the look on Liz’s face, I can tell that something is wrong. She explains that, surely a three-story walk-up with no elevator wasn’t what we had in mind and smack dab in the middle of the city when we could be in some cute wine region town in Bordeaux? Really, what was I thinking when I booked this place? She then asks if all, or most, of our other AirBnB reservations are in cities or, hopefully, nestled in the small towns outside of the city.

The look on my face was all she needed to get her answer. Yes, in fact, I had booked nearly all of our accommodations in the cities and near the city center. Only in Tuscany did I find a place that was “far from the maddening crowd”.

This revelation was followed by a long period of silence between us. For her part, Liz was feeling unheard and for mine, unappreciated. For the next hour or so, I wrestled with lots of statements that all began with, “but you…”. 

Over 20 years ago, I had participated in a multi-session, marriage enrichment course with several other couples based upon Harville Hendrix’s workshop, “Getting the Love You Want”. A lot of what was discussed related to effective communication among spouses based upon the observation that unmet and unstated expectations are often at the core of difficulties within marriage relationships. Hendrix suggested removing all “You” statements and replace them with “I” statements. So rather than saying, “But Liz, you never…” or “You didn’t…”, I should find some conversation starters that began with, “I didn’t…” or “It makes me feel…”.

This sounds easy, but it is really hard, particularly if you don’t practice it much. I kept mulling this over in my head until finally I said, “Liz, I don’t handle it very well when I disappoint someone, in fact, I suck at it.” She immediately responded affirmatively saying that she understood I had done all or most of the preparation work and if she really wanted to be “heard” she could have been more involved in the planning. “I’m sure this will all work out just fine”, she concluded. Problem solved (mostly). Thank you, Harville Hendrix.

After unpacking our stuff, we climbed down the 90 stairs to the street and went for a walk along the river. With so many 18^th century buildings, Bordeaux feels a lot like a smaller version of Paris, but rather than walking the Seine, you are waking along the Garonne.

Bordeaux played a central role in the French Revolution as many of its leaders came from here, so, we shouldn’t have been surprised to find “Yellow Vests” and police in full body armor and automatic weapons in Place de la Bourse, the main square. Still it is very unsettling, but thankfully, once the weekend past, the Yellow Vests and the security forces did too.

We ate dinner at Restaurant Influences, a small and beautiful restaurant a short walk from our home (everything is close here). Upon entering the restaurant, I noticed a large picture of the Golden Gate bridge prominently displayed on the wall, so I asked the hostess about that. I then learned that a) she was not the hostess, she was the co-owner; b) she had taken the picture herself; and c) she had traveled from Bordeaux to San Francisco a few years back to work as the pastry chef in an upscale French restaurant in San Francisco called “La Folie”. It was at La Folie that she met her husband (he also worked there as the chef) and they returned to Bordeaux a few years ago to open their own restaurant.

She further explained that at their restaurant they have the Surprise Menu. Its goal - to surprise guests with creative food that combines tradition and modernity. We simply informed them of any allergies (none) and eating preferences (Malcolm is a vegetarian with fish) and they would “surprise” us with their food. And, indeed, we were surprised. A truly fantastic dinner, beautifully prepared, terrific presentation and tantalizing tastes.

The next day, Sunday, we stopped for breakfast at one of the many boulangeries/patisseries for coffee and croissants. A word about coffee in France (for that matter, throughout Europe). They like espresso which comes in very small cups. You can order cappuccinos or lattes and the closest you’ll come to an American cup of coffee is a café crème. What you will never find is half and half. It doesn’t exist, only milk, and that is a severe disappointment. But the croissants are to die for (and it is not out of the question that I will if I continue to devour them at my current pace).

This morning we have signed up for a free, 2-hour walking tour of the city. At 10am we meet our guide, Rose, at Monument aux Girondins. We are a small group of only four and Rose explains that she is Spanish and typically doesn’t do the English-language tours, but that guide had called in sick, so here she was and she will do her best (she was great). Our co-walkers for this tour include a woman from Montreal who has extensively traveled this part of the world (she has hiked major portions of the Camino de Santiago five times) and a younger woman from Moscow who worked for the Russian Olympics organization and was attending an exhibition in Cologne, Germany for the Special Olympics. She had found a cheap flight on RyanAir to Bordeaux for the weekend. She spoke multiple languages, including perfect English, and was by far the most knowledgeable about the architecture and the history of Bordeaux with the exception of our guide, Rose.

We began our tour at the meeting point - Monument aux Girondins. The Girondins refer to the revolutionaries from Bordeaux. During the revolution, they had disagreements (primarily support for the monarchy and antiwar) with the positions taken by Robespierre and the Mountain Division. Eventually, like so many others, they were tried, convicted and guillotined.

Monument aux Girondins

From here we wandered the city to Notre Dame (every city in France seems to have a Notre Dame cathedral), Cathedral St Andre, the Grand Theatre, Plaza Quiconces, Rue St Catherine, Basilica St Michael and several more. It was a very informative tour and a great way to get our bearings to facilitate further exploration on our own.

One of the more interesting bits we learned during our tour was the story of Eleanor of Acquitaine. At the age of 15, when her father, William X, died in 1137, she became the Duchess of Acquitaine and, thereby, the owner of large portions of southwest France including the entire region of Bordeaux. Three months later, she married King Louis VII, who was only 17 at the time, and, thereby, became Queen of France and all her lands became part of the French empire. Fifteen years later and having endured an unhappy marriage, their marriage was annulled by the Pope owing to the fact that Eleanor had not produced a male heir. Eleanor immediately became engaged and then married the Duke of Normandy who two years later became the King of England and, thus, Eleanor became the Queen of England and all of her lands shifted from the French to the British empire where they remained for 300 years.

We spent the afternoon exploring new parts of the city as well as returning to some of the sites we saw in the morning. Dinner that night was at a wine bar. We returned home, rather tired having walked about nine miles.

Saint-André Cathedral

On Monday, which the weather forecast indicated would be our best day, we headed to the coastal town of Arcachon, about an hour’s drive west from Bordeaux. Arcachon sits on a harbor protected from the Atlantic Ocean by a long and large peninsula to the west. It has a long boardwalk and many, many shops and restaurants. It’s best known for its oysters and the Dune du Pilat, the tallest sand dune in Europe.

We enjoyed a long walk on the boardwalk, ate lunch at a restaurant on the beach and then headed for the sand dune – Dune du Pilat. This is an amazing geological feature and well worth the visit. The sand is quite fine and it is massive both in height as well as stretching on and on. Climbing the dune was challenging with the sand slipping beneath your feet with every step, but eventually, you reach the top with magnificent views of the Atlantic. Having earned the right with all of your hard work, the crest of the dune makes a perfect place to sit down and enjoy the views while catching your breath.

Dune du Pilat

After descending the dunes, we returned to our car, explored some of the beach neighborhoods and then headed back to Bordeaux. For dinner, we enjoyed wine, cheese and chocolate at our apartment.  

Tuesday began with a return trip to Karl’s, a small café a short-walk from our apartment. We have now fallen into a bit of a morning routine which begins with café crème and croissants at Karl’s while we plan the day’s activities. Today, we have booked a wine country tour with Rustic Vines. Their “Famous Monks” tour will take us to St Emilion where we will spend the day visiting a couple of wineries and touring the famous medieval town of St Emilion.

We arrive at the Rustic Vines offices at 10am and are met there by our guide Alan, who happens to be a young guy from Modesto, CA who is in Bordeaux completing his masters in wine sciences at the University of Bordeaux. We are a group of eight – Liz and myself plus six folks from Brunei who have traveled all this way to experience wine as their country is alcohol-free. It immediately becomes clear that this isn’t their first wine exploration trip as they are very educated about wine and Bordeaux in particular.

We hop in the van and Alan begins to educate us about what we will experience today. Alan explains that Bordeaux is comprised of three large wine regions that are defined by two rivers. First, the Garonne on which the city of Bordeaux sits, then, the Dordogne to the east. These rivers combine north of Bordeaux to form the Gironde River before making their way to the Atlantic Ocean and form something of an inverted wishbone. The wine region to the left or west is referred to as “The Left Bank” and is famous for Bordeaux wines that are strongly influenced by Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine region to the right or east is called “The East Bank” and is dominated by Merlot. And the wine region formed by the split of the two rivers is called “Entre-Deux Mers” which means “between two rivers” and is known for white wines, primarily Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon. Today, we will be traveling to St. Emilion which is in the East Bank.

Alan then asks how many varietals make up the Bordeaux wines and can we name them. I confidently state “Five – cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc, petit verdot and malbec.” He says, “not bad, anyone else?”, and one of our Brunei friends says six and then adds Carménère to the list. Alan says, “Excellent!”, and I stand corrected and remind myself that this is why you go on these tours in the first place.

We pass the hour’s drive with Alan educating us further on winemaking in general and Bordeaux in particular. He explains that each of the three wine regions – left bank, right bank and entre-deux mers – are further divided into 37 appellations which is a legal description of a region that can be used to identify where a wine comes from. For example, a Napa Valley Cab defines a wine that is from the Napa Valley appellation and made of cabernet sauvignon grapes.

But this is France where they have been making wine for centuries, so there are rules or conventions and one does not go outside the lines. For example, if your winery is located in Bordeaux, then you must produce wines from specific grapes that are the Bordeaux grapes (the six named above when making a red wine, for example). If you want to make a wine from a different red grape – a syrah or a pinot noir – then you may, but you can never call it a Bordeaux. Due to this condition, you almost never find the name of the grapes on a bottle of French wine because, if it is a Bordeaux, then you know it must consist of one or more of the Bordeaux varietals and that’s all you need to know (at least that’s what the French believe). So, a wine from the left bank appellation of Margaux will simply say “Margaux” on it plus the  name of the winery.

Complicating matters even more, the French also use a classification system to rank specific vineyards to indicate quality – a good, better, best system. In Bordeaux, there are five ranking systems and they breakdown into three different approaches. The first is one where the winery applies for a specific classification. This can be done every ten years and you either get it or you don’t, for example you might want to go from good to better. The second is where, every ten years, your winery and every other winery, gets a mandatory review and classification. You may go up, down or stay the same. And the third classification is the most draconian of all – in 1855 Napoleon declared that vineyards must be classified and, once classified, the classification never changes. And new wineries that did not exist in 1855 can never receive a classification. This is the system used in the Left Bank. (Note: most wineries in France are have no classification.)

So, when you see Grand Cru, Premier Grand Cru or Premier Grand Cru A on the bottle, this means good, better, best and can quite literally mean a bottle of wine that sells for $25, $150 or $500+.  Classifications, therefore, have a big impact on the financial success of a winery and, where money is involved, so is corruption, and the French work hard to keep their system clean.

After an hour of driving and hundreds of years of lessons in French winemaking, we arrive at our first winery in St Emilion, Château Jean Faure, a Grand Cru winery, one of only 63 on the Right Bank. The tour is excellent and the wines are great (primarily made from merlot, cabernet franc and some petit verdot). And, by Napa standards, they are incredibly affordable. A good bottle of wine can be purchased for $10-$15 and an excellent bottle for $20-$35.

Château Jean Faure

After our tour, we drove into the town of St Emilion established in 767 by a monk named Emilion where we enjoyed a picnic lunch at a setting overlooking this beautiful city. After lunch, we walked through the city and its church, ultimately arriving at a wine merchant store where we tasted yet more wonderful wines.

St Emilion

We then left town to tour another winery whose vineyards are adjacent to one of only four Premier Grand Cru A wineries in the St Emilion appellation, Château Moncets. This chateau, originally built in 1770 by one of Napoleon’s generals, has recently changed hands and is undergoing a massive renovation, so the tour was brief, but the wines were great. We enjoyed them at a picnic bench with cheese, bread and charcuterie overlooking their sprawling estate. From here, we headed home and everyone, except Alan, took the opportunity to sleep off the day’s adventures.

Château Moncets

That night we ate dinner at Nofa, another exceptional dining experience where every plate had to be photographed before it was sumptuously consumed. The boutique restaurant is owned and operated by three siblings and a sister-in-law who carried her infant daughter on her back all evening while serving us one amazing plate after another.

The next day, Wednesday May 8^th, the weather forecast indicated rain followed by more rain. Per our usual, we began with café crème at Karl’s and a croissant. As the rain had not yet began, we decided to walk the six mile loop across the Pont de Pierre bridge, over the Garonne river, then north along the Garonne to the Pont Jacques Chaban-Delmas bridge back over the Garonne, and then south to complete the loop.

While working at Bentley, an infrastructure software company, a reporter once asked me what my favorite type of infrastructure was. Without hesitating, I said “bridges” because they connect people and places that otherwise would not connect. These two bridges are perfect examples of that.

The first, the Pont de Pierre bridge, was commissioned by Napoleon in 1822 and is the first bridge in Bordeaux and the only to connect the historic city center to the newer neighborhoods on the west side for over 150 years. Built entirely of stone, it has 17 arches which coincidentally is the same number of letters in Napoleon Bonaparte (now that’s an architect who knew where his bread was buttered).

The second bridge, the Pont Jacques Chaban-Delmas, was completed in 2013 and is an engineering masterpiece and a work of art. Named after a former mayor of Bordeaux and Prime Minister of France, the Pont Jacques Chaban-Delmas bridge is 575 meters long with a central span of over 100 meters that raises up vertically, hoisted by four towers that lifts the span up 110 meters to let large ships pass underneath. During our walk, we were fortunate to watch a cruise ship sail underneath and then the span lowered to its normal position. What a perfect example of connecting people to places!

Pont Jacques Chaban-Delmas bridge in the up position

 

Pont Jacques Chaban-Delmas bridge in the down position

After completing our morning walk, this day we mostly kicked back in our apartment while a gentle rain fell, did laundry, read books, worked on this blog and took a nap. For dinner, we stayed in and enjoyed a bottle of Bordeaux we had purchased at Jean Faure in St Emilion the day before, with cheese, soup and some lovely grilled vegetables that Liz had prepared. A perfect, low-key dinner to end a perfect, low-key day.

On Thursday, we headed to the Left Bank of the Bordeaux winery and the Margaux region. Unlike Napa and Sonoma where the wineries are open to the public and cater to walk-in customers with their friendly tasting rooms, the Bordeaux wine region is not very accessible or all that welcoming. All of the high end wineries require appointments through online inquiries which are mostly not available and typically not even responded to. The website for Château Margaux, one of the original wineries and most prestigious in Bordeaux dating back to the late 1600’s, proclaims “Visits to the cellars by appointment only from Monday to Friday. Closed on weekends, public holidays, in August and during the harvest. Tasting is only for professionals. No direct sales.” Not exactly a warm welcome.

We filled out four different online requests for appointments. Politely informed by two that appointments were not available for the day/time we requested without any mention of alternatives and no response from the other two. Alan, our Rustic Vines tour guide from Tuesday, suggested we try Château Siran, also in the Margaux region. This turned out to be fortuitous as it was the only winery that responded positively to our request and so we were off to our 2pm appointment.

We arrived in Margaux early to drive through and get a sense of the region. It is beautiful, stately and unmistakably old with a true sense of history. We had a bite to eat at a local restaurant before heading to our tour and tasting.

Château Siran has been in the Barbier family for 160 years acquired in 1859 by Leo Barbier. He acquired it from Jeanne-Adèle, Countess of Toulouse-Lautrec, the great-grandmother of the famous painter. Since then, six generations of have succeeded each other at the head of the estate and today it is owned and operated by Edouard Miailhe, the great, great, great grandson of Leo Barbier. Château Siran is one of many wineries that is not classified, in spite of its long history and being right next door to many that are. As it turns out, Toulouse-Lautrec did not get along with Napoleon, so way back in 1855 when the classification system for the Left Bank was established, Toulouse-Lautrec chose not to apply in protest - a decision that likely has cost the Barbier family millions.

Ancient wine vessels in the museum at Château Siran

Our tour guide at Siran is Anastasia. She is from Russia and speaks at least three different languages, fluently. Our tour lasts for 1½ hours and includes several tastings as well as a cheese plate. The wines are terrific in spite of having no classification. One of the more interesting items on the tour is Le Bunker, a bomb shelter built after the Three-Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania, out of an abundance of caution, due to the presence of a nearby nuclear reactor. Today, it is used to store Siran wines going back to 1912 as well as the owner’s private collection.

From Château Siran, we head to one more winery, Château Marquis de Terme. The château was first established in 1762 by the Marquis de Terme. The château was purchased by the Feuillerat family who operated it for 120 years including over the period including 1855. They had no quarrels with Napoleon and the winery was classified as a Grand Cru which, by definition, it still is today. The original family re-purchased the winery in 1935 and still operate it today.

Our tour here was exceptional including an exceptional look at the new technologies they have deployed during fermentation and clarification, prior to aging in the barrel. In Bordeaux, they use a combination of stainless steel and concrete for fermentation and typically in very large containers that are either rectangular (concrete) or cylindrical (stainless steel). This winery was experimenting with egg shaped wooden and concrete containers that were quite small as well as inverted stainless steel trapezoidal containers. I found it all very fascinating to see the centuries-old French pushing the limits of technology.

Egg-shaped fermentation containers at Château Marquis de Terme 

After our wonderful tour and tastings, we headed back to our apartment in Bordeaux where we had dinner at Le Chicoula Bistrot d'Art, another extraordinary dining experience where every dish required a photo first. This would be our last night in Bordeaux, so we treated ourselves.

Our final day in Bordeaux, Friday May 10^th began with packing and multiple trips to reverse the process of transporting our luggage from the apartment to our car in the parking garage. While it is definitely easier to carry them down 90 steps and then 100 meters, we were both pretty exhausted by the time the it was all complete.

Our flight to Valencia, Spain wasn’t until 8pm, so we had time to kill. A trip to Karl’s for café crème and croissants got us started and then we walked from one museum to another including the Musée des Beaux-Arts (fine arts), Musée des Arts Décoratifs et du Design (interior design) and La Cité du Vin (the city of wine).

In the gardens at Musée des Beaux-Arts

We returned to our apartment to clean up and then headed to the airport three hours prior to our scheduled departure. And it turned out we needed every minute of those three hours as, first, getting gas in France to fill our rental wasn’t easy. The nearest gas station was over three miles from the airport, had only two pumps running and a line of cars that backed out onto the road.

Next, we were flying Ryan Air, a cheap fares airline in Europe. When we rolled up to the ticket counter to check-in, we were informed that since we didn’t check in online beforehand, we would have to go to their ticket counter and pay €55 each so that they could print a paper copy of our boarding pass (I’m not making this up), plus we would have to pay €20 each for two bags that were deemed to be too large to fit the overhead bins. This is how “cheap” airlines can afford such low airfares (yes, the bottle of water on the flight cost €3). With that said, the flight took off early and arrived early in Valencia.

And with that, we have now completed our second week out of 34. Stay tuned.

Musings from the other half:

Hello friends & family, Liz here. I’ve decided to participate in this blogging adventure on occasion. Malcolm, as you might have figured out by now, takes this blogging thing very seriously and I am so appreciative of his time.

One of the first things I’ve decided with regards to this blog is to let Malcolm’s recollections remain intact – in other words, for the most part, I’m not editing his words. But rather will share my recollections as they differ (not sure Harville would agree but he’s not here…!).

Okay, so back to my musings. First of all, why aren’t all the people who grace this beautiful country of France overweight and alcoholics?! The cheese, bread and wine are to die for – and I just might if I don’t stop consuming them all. Fantastic gastronomic experiences everywhere we dined. So much for my gluten free life style – I’ve consumed more bread in 2 weeks than the last three years. And Malcolm has become a “flexitarian” – a word I discovered online before we left home – basically he’s gone from veganism to eating pretty much whatever is put in front of him – and loving it all.

As Malcolm mentioned in an earlier post, I loved Giverny. It is so beautiful. Simple, yet so elegant. I am a huge fan of Impressionism so definitely biased. So far, my favorite stop. And the surrounding fields are filled with yellow plants that are grown to make canola oil – who knew?

I try not to be a typical American but it’s hard when you show up in a country and can’t speak one word of their language. All of the various people we have encountered have gone out of their way to be kind and help us figure out what we are actually looking for. Case in point, a woman cashier in a Hyper U food store, after her male counterpart basically just told me he couldn’t check my produce out, walked me over to the produce section - weighed and labeled all of it correctly and walked me back to have him check us out. Merci!)

And, yes, it’s true, I was rather surprised that we were in a 4 story walk-up with 2 larger than life duffel bags plus 2 roller boards. Who would book that? Well, we did. And Malcolm, as he correctly mentioned, did all the research on our AirBnBs. I did see most of them but that means I looked at the pics not the exact locations. My bad. But trust me, this place was not only a walk-up, it wasn’t the nicest place we’ve ever stayed. But hey, location was fantastic, I had a separate bedroom for my luggage and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Bordeaux!

The driveway at Château Margaux - that's as close as we got

In some ways it feels as we’ve been gone longer than two weeks. Not sure how we’ll feel two months from now. Each place has shown its own unique charm and we have the luxury to see it all or just chill and enjoy the moments. Our weather has been delightful so far and we’re looking forward to a bit warmer temps in Spain.

And the AirBnB story continues in Valencia but I get ahead of our story…stay tuned.