Advertisement
Published: June 28th 2008
Edit Blog Post
June 26, 27, 2008
Bordeaux, France
We arrived in Bordeaux in time on Thursday to take the local tram to the center of town to have a look around. Turns out our timing was perfect for me. The annual “Bordeaux Fete Le Vin” ( Wine Festival ) was just getting started and the promenade along the Garonne River was set up for wine tasting from all the areas producing “ Bordeaux “wine. This is a very well organized affair. With the purchase of a wine glass ( with carry case ) and a coupon book you get to try about 10 of any of the hundreds of Bordeaux wines being promoted. We enjoyed a few hours roaming around and will do some more exploring in the city tomorrow. Weather has been great here and in fact it is very hot.
Friday morning we took a short city tour around Bordeaux. This is a very beautiful city known as the cultural center of France. The city is home to a very nice “old city”, with some very nice architecture and a very modern system of roads, trams etc.. The cruise ships that stop here dock at the port that
is a few miles away from the city on the Atlantic Coast.
People have been living here as a major settlement for over a 2300 years or so. The location on the Garonne River and close to the Atlantic Ocean was a great place to “set up camp” and the river walk now makes for some very nice places to walk and get some good views of the current city. We spent a few hours walking the city and looking at shops. ( Also bad timing here !! Summer sale in high gear with the usual 50% off everything !!! - must be a French thing, this annual summer sale !! ) Alice was having fun.
Obviously the big deal here is the wine, and here we are in the middle of the wine festival ( Bordeaux Fete le Vin ). People from all over come to this and we just lucked on to it. We tried a few of the local wines and for my taste we found many very good, some average and some not so good. ( That’s my taste, others probably felt differently. Isn’t that one of the great things about wine ?? ).
There is something special about sitting on the banks of the Garonne, on an absolutely spectacular summer day, with some good wine and some great French cheese. ( and a grilled duck baguette sandwich for lunch )
It’s very interesting that the wines here are still named by “Appellation” ( The area the grapes are from ) and not by the type of grapes. Some of the people working the booths were very knowledgeable and helpful in explaining the business in France and the importance to them of the region growing the grapes. We did notice, that now, nearly all the people working the booths were also promoting the type of grapes that go in to making the different wines. That’s a more familiar system for any foreign visitors.
All in all, Bordeaux is a very nice place to visit and we would come back here to do some more exploring the surrounding area and some of the other points of interest in Bordeaux. Maybe even visit some more chateaus !!
Off tomorrow to the north coast of Spain.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.08s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 12; qc: 35; dbt: 0.0524s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb