We had a busy day today.
We left the apartment at 9 this morning to go to the tourist bureau to book our river cruise that is included in the Bordeaux city pass. We booked it for tomorrow at 11. From there we took the tram to the ‘’la cité du vin’’ where we spend the morning leaning about wine. There are lots of interactive activities to do as well as lots of stations to stop at and learn. At the end of the visit, we took the elevator to the top floor where you can go outside and look at the view all while drinking a sample of wine. I chose a 2009 Bordeaux. It was from a region 10 km east from the Saint Émilion region.
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We had lunch at Les Halles de Bacalan and then took a bus to "les bassins des lumières’’. It was quite a walk from the bus stop to the bunkers where the bassins des lumières is located. This is a digital art center located in a former German submarine base during the time that Germany occupied Bordeaux during the Second World War. It was a bit different from what we expected. The featured artist this season is Henri Matisse. There were lots of lights and colors and was interesting to see even through Henri Matisse's work is not our style.
The former German submarine bunker where we will go for the Basins de Lumières.
One
of the things on the list of options on the city pass is a guided tour of a
whiskey distillery called moon Harbour. The lady at the tourist bureau couldn’t
book it for us because they didn’t open until 2. She told us to call when they
opened to book for tomorrow, but we couldn’t figure out how to make the phone
call so since it was only a 20-minute walk from where we were we walked and
booked a tour for tomorrow afternoon. It turned out we had to walk another 20
minutes to the tram stop to return to the city center. I hope we can find a
better option (maybe the bus) for tomorrow because it’s calling for heavy rain
tomorrow again as well as wind.
Our next stop was ‘’Le musée du vin et du négoce. We visited the vaulted cellars while listening to the explanations on our phones. It is totally different from La cite du vin as it covers wine trade in the Chartrons district. At the end we were given 2 tastings of wine, one a claret that is no longer exported and a red wine from the region of entre deux mers.
Since
it was sunny this morning when we left, we had decided that today would be a
good time to climb ‘’la porte Cailhau’’. As luck would have it , it started to
rain as we were walking there. Note that today we had worn our rain jackets and
packed our umbrellas in our backpacks. We have quickly learned that the weather forecasting is no better than back home. As all this is covered by the Bordeaux
pass, we decided to do it anyway. It is only 4 levels up, but the stairs are
very narrow and curve all the way to the top. Thankfully, there are exhibits on
every level. The view is not that great especially in the rain, but it was
interesting, nevertheless. One side had a nice view of the river and with no
panes on the windows it would have made for nice pictures if it had not been
raining.
As we arrived at the appartement, Jacques’ phone rang. It was the company doing the cruise saying that they were cancelling the cruise for tomorrow but that since it was them that was cancelling they offered us a cruise for Friday at 11 even though our pass will be expired by then. This means that we can visit someplace else tomorrow. We were thinking maybe the Aquitain museum and a tram ride to the train station to get an estimate of the time frame for our trip next week to Saint Émilion. We will go inside and get a view of where to get our tickets etc..
We decided to go out for supper at a restaurant a couple of streets away. We had seen one that had cassoulet on their menu and wanted to try it. It was very good with lots of white beans, confied duck leg, pork belly, and sausage.
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