In Bordeaux we took a taxi from the gare to our hotel.
There was a line of taxis outside the train station. We went up to the first one, and I showed the driver the address of the hotel as I had written it.
He looked at it, looked at it some more, and told us he needed to ask his colleague. Ok.... He asked the next guy in the taxi line, who did a lot of gesticulating -- and then got out of his taxi and both men went to talk to the third guy in line..... Hmmmm.
Then our driver came back. I said "Ok?" and he answered "Ok, but it's complicated."
Ok.........
These pics were taken from the taxi.
This is la Place de la Victoire in Bordeaux.
(That's the first time I've used Google's translation service. Looks pretty cool!)
Did you see the turtles? I didn't see the little one until I made this tighter crop.
I'm sure that those now-they-block-you-now-they-don't up-and-down street blockers (like the ones we saw in Bayonne) contributed to the taxi complications. The taxi guy had access to pass some of them, but not all, is my surmise.
In the end, he let us out before we got all the way there, and told us it was "100 meters" to the hotel -- "go to the end of the street, turn right, then turn left." We were in the "pedestrian (almost) only" area already, and needed to cross what turned out to be the biggest shopping street. I bet you need triple-secret-probation access to cross St. Catherine with a vehicle in the middle of the day......
Anyway, the hotel was exactly where he said it would be, and we passed a Paul bakery on the way, so we knew we'd have access to good bread while in Bordeaux.
We checked into our hotel, which was nice enough that I wondered if we'd gotten confused about the price when we booked...... You know -- the kind of hotel with electric towel warmers? I'd never had one of those before (and didn't use the one in Bordeaux, but I could have!). But no, the price was what I'd thought. Excellent.
Looking for some lunch. The Paul I mentioned was about 100 feet from the door of our hotel. Paul makes very good baguettes. The savories are ok but nothing out of the ordinary. I had that little spinachy-looking quiche.
These are big, almost palm-of-my-hand size. I do believe the labels are all shifted over one column......
I didn't realize these were special, when I took the pic. I only recognized that they were cute.
Later I learned the canelé (can nell lay) is Bordeaux's signature sweet. Cinnamon in français is cannelle. They have a bit of cinnamon, but mostly are sweet. I think they are always this shape, but they can come in different sizes, and the sugary outside can be in different degrees of hardness, from firm-but-sticky, to hard-candy, breaks-sharply-when-you-bite.
We ate in our (oh-so-convenient, right-in-the-middle-of-everything) hotel room, and then went back out. We wanted to find the tourist office, and to get the foodie signed up for a wine-tasting.
If you turned right, out of our hotel, there was one store between it and St. Catherine. If you turned right on St. Catherine, you were about one block from the area where the next few pics were taken.
I didn't see a Fauchon in Bordeaux, but since we saw this billboard, I bet there is one.
Love window boxes....... There are lots and lots and lots of red geraniums in window boxes all over France.
A lot of things about this pic seem French to me. The color of the stone. The statues on top of the building. The little (purple) car. (Lots of very little cars, in France. Wish more people used them here!) The motorcycle (though I have to admit I didn't notice until now that it has two front wheels....).
And let's not forget the stripes. It seems that there is a great fondness for stripes on clothing, in France.
I am not sure if this is part of the École du Vin (School of Wine), but it is adjacent.
(I can't decide if the reflection on this window is interesting or annoying.... I guess it will be better for my blood pressure if I go with "interesting.")
Here's one of the cows I talked about in my text-only post written when we were actually in Bordeaux. What's not to like about orange and blue?
We went to the tourist office, got the wine-tasting class signed up at the École du Vin, and wandered just a bit farther up St. Catherine into la Place des Quinconces.
This column is part of the monument to the Girondists who were killed during the French revolution.
It would have been nice if I had taken a pic of the whole thing, I bet, but that's not what caught my eye, 'twas this statue at the top. (Near as we could figure, the lettering says UGUGU.... ??)
This fountain is also part of the monument. (At the top of this pic you see the bottom of the column holding up the statue above.)
Wikipedia, in the article linked above for la Place des Quinconces, notes this is one of the largest city squares in Europe. After that huge empty space in Carcassonne, I'm starting to wonder about ginormous empty spaces in cities -- why? -- but at least this one didn't feel at all creepy.
The monument was pretty much just behind me, as I took this next pic.
Just beyond the pair of columns in the above is the Garonne river. (looooove wikipedia....)
I don't know how much of the riverfront on this side of the Garonne is park, but a lot of it is, at least, right here. This is a lovely area. Wide walkways, gardens, interesting light fixtures, Stately Buildings, and, we'll get to it, the Mirror.
Most of those people, up ahead, are on the Mirror. We didn't know how cool it was, when this pic was taken, or I'm sure we'd have gone up there for a look.....
It was time to start thinking about supper. We turned away from the waterfront and headed back in the direction of our hotel.
There are a lot of really big knockers in France.
I asked the foodie if she would please give you an idea how big. It wasn't until I saw this on the "big screen" that I realized we were reflected....
I can't tell you how much I wanted this. A sensible souvenir, don't you think? A gallon (glass) jar of cooked beans and other delectables?
This got us started thinking about other souvenirs that would be expensive, heavy, bulky, and fragile. We started an imaginary collection of things we did NOT bring home..........
Don't you love this? Wouldn't it have to brighten your life, if the pavement you walked over each day looked like this? I am sure they wouldn't mind ripping it out and wrapping up for me to take home, if the price were right.... Wouldn't that look good, in the middle of our driveway?
Spotted in a pet store window. This began an offshoot of the "Souvenirs We Did NOT Bring Home" collection -- the "Presents We Did NOT Bring Home" collection. We thought of Wilbur, but did NOT bring him a cow femur.
He has no interest in balls of any kind. (So odd, after the corgis, who LOVED balls and who would fetch up anything you tossed ... he has no interest in toys.)
I'd seen miniature tennis balls (for very small dogs), but had never before seen one the size of a volleyball!
Footprints leading into another shop, on the same street as the pet store.
See my daughter's take on moving to Bordeaux here.
In order to facilitate chronological traverse of these posts, here is a link to the post that comes after this one.
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