August 27 -- the end of the day in Bordeaux

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We decided we were tired, and would visit the nearby grocery and have bread and yogurt in our room.

I had spotted the Monoprix (grocery chain) from the taxi, just a few blocks from our hotel. We headed across St. Catherine, veering north about 40 feet, and headed west.

This is looking south on St. Catherine. This street had a very mall-like feel. Biggish chain stores, which felt (from the street; I didn't go in) very much like stores in the mall here in the USA might feel.

The street our hotel was on was just behind me, on my left, as I took this next pic.





There was a courtyard behind these imposing doors. Wonder who lives there; what they do for a living; what the apartments are like......





A 'shopped closeup of the above.





Quite curious about this very skinny little tower, plunked on top of what I think was an apartment building.....





Love this.





The above was right in front of this....







Getting closer to a big church.









Not sure what this is, nor why it is perforated.





At the Monoprix.

Mangosteens.





Fortified with yogurt, and our very first applesauce-with-rhubarb!, we are now on our way back to the hotel.

One of the many kinds of cute little car not often seen in the USA.







Something else that roused my curiosity. I wonder what's up with the little beehive thingie.....





Our Ann Arbor eyes are primed to see this...





...when what's really there is this. (But ... red and white? No, no, no. Maize and blue........)





We saw dogs everywhere, but only saw a handful of cats.

Shop cat, minding the store in the evening.



Note that all the dogs we saw were with people.  We saw no street dogs, only dogs who clearly belonged to people.  The cats we saw also were pets.  I think maybe I saw one cat who was alone, outside, but it looked sleek and glossy and like it belonged to someone and was taking the air, rather than looking like it had to make its own way in the world....



Here is something else I really wish someone would explain to me.

We saw discarded shoes everywhere. At least -- there were shoes on garbage cans. All over. I concluded they were discarded, from their location, but perhaps someone left them there for a moment to ... go roller-skating? Or something? This is the first pair I captured in pixels, but I'd seen some before.

I thought the first pair or two were anomalous, but when I saw them everywhere, I began to wonder........





Looking north on St. Catherine, the amount of light reflecting off that triangular building almost overwhelms the camera's ability to think about exposure.





Looking south on St. Catherine, as far as my little camera's 6x zoom can see. I didn't realize until I got home and saw it on the "big screen" that we are looking at la Place de la Victoire (we saw a closer version in the previous post).





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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