Allo?

Bordeaux is a city along the Garonne River and used to be the number two port in France. They have recently made improvements to the city by putting in a great walkway along the river, closing some of the squares to traffic, and adding a tram that takes you around the city. The tram I think looks a bit odd being that it is so Disneyland monorail looking among the fantastic building architecture from the 1700s. At night many of the buildings have accent lights pointed up at them to show their detail. Tomorrow before our afternoon flight to Bologna we plan on taking a tram ride around the city and visit some of the churches.

Well we started the day here in FRANCE today with a Giants game! We woke up by accident at 4:00am and Mark got out the computer to check the score since we were awake. We got sucked in when we saw it was so close, so we watched them on a laptop while in bed at 5:30 in the morning bring home the victory.

After lying in bed for a while wide awake, we got up for real, since we weren’t going back to sleep after that excitement. We had a lovely breakfast of fresh croissants (surprise), fruit salad, just squeezed OJ, yogurt, crunchy French bread with homemade preserves, and artichoke quiche (am I making you hungry?) in the dining room of our B and B. Annie, it may not have been as good as your bangers though……. (not).

After breakfast we walked into the city center to meet up with others for our wine tour of the Graves region. Château Haut-Bailly was our first stop after a half hour drive through the countryside. The vineyards go on forever, more acreage than our wine country it seems. I was happy to get out of the city. We tasted a couple of wines at Chateau Haut-Bailly. Drank one and dumped one.

My favorite was our second stop, Chateau-Olivier, where we also had lunch………..a very “special” lunch we were told. A lunch that would be served at Christmas time the guide told us.

The menu was oysters, foie gras prepared three different ways, duck breast with green beans and potatoes, a dish of eue cheese (traditional Basque) with cherry sauce and salad, and, lastly, a trio of desserts. The meal was paired with some wonderful white and red wines.

Since we were seated next to our guide, the pressure was on to be polite and eat what we were served. Mark and I had some of everything. I know many people like oysters and our tablemates from all over the world were sucking them down……but I have to admit, I have never tried them because I think they look disgusting. I was brave and went for it. Felt like I was swallowing a loogy. I had to chug water and finish swallowing it like it was a pill. I almost gagged. I didn’t like the foie gras either. The rest of the food I liked. Guess I am a picky eater and that nice menu was wasted on me.

Last stop was a historic castle that we toured called the Chateau de la Brede, home of Montesquieu, a French philosopher & author who was the father of the French Revolution. The ride home was pretty quiet……….Mark even took a little snooze.

Dinner was back in Bordeaux after doing a load of laundry at a little inexpensive place back in city center which is a 20 minute walk from where we are staying. Not so good food. Young people surrounded us here in Bordeaux again. They seem to gather in the streets with large groups of friends day and night. So many of them smoke also. They even get up in the middle of a meal at a restaurant and go outside for a smoke.

Many details here on this site but we will save this blog and the pictures as a journal of our trip.