Day in Bordeaux: Trip to France 13/28

After a long afternoon the day prior due to infrequent buses/trains in the countryside, SMS and I decided to forego our planned trip to Pauillac. Even though I like this one the best wine-wise, I had only made one tasting in the middle afternoon. This would kind of eat up the whole day since it took just under 2 hours each way and the midafternoon lull would really take up a lot of time. Plus, I didn’t trust ourselves not to miss another bus, lol…sob.

So, we decided to make the day a Bordeaux day. This was a good call! The city is so pretty and we had only just scratched the surface the evening prior.

We bought day-passes for the tram. Our first stop was the Jardin public. We had tried to go the evening prior but they had just closed the gates (30 min before the official closing time, per signage).

The garden is absolutely beautiful. We strolled through most of it and really enjoyed ourselves. Throughout our vacation, it’s been impressive how many gardens are still quite vibrant in October, although there are signs that Winter is coming based on the changing leaves

After the garden, we walked to the Golden Triangle neighborhood. The streets are cute and there is excellent window shopping!

Marché des Capucins

For lunch, we made our way over to Marché des Capucins. I had heard of a good oyster place, Chez Jean-Mi. I really liked the market, SMS was less enthralled. Admittedly, it was more wholesale-focused/food industry shoppers than a cute food hall for individual diners (that would come later in the day via a fortunate find!).

Bordeaux Wine Museums

After lunch, we went to the first wine museum of the day. Yes, there were two to see in Bordeaux! This was the smaller of the museums focused on the Bordeaux industry history. The museum consists of several exhibits in a house formerly owned by a wealthy wine merchant. It was interesting to see how many levels there are to wine-selling: the vintner, the wholesaler, the merchant (who in the old days, aged and bottled the wine and decided when it was ready to sell), and the consumer. I may not have this exactly right, but it explains why there are a lot of levels and regulations to this day.

After the self-guided tour, we had a wine tasting. Yay! It was in English and the group was us and a Norwegian couple. The guy was nice and his runthrough of the regional map was helpful, especially in combination with our workshop knowledge from yesterday!

Cité du Vin museum

After that museum, it was time to go to the Cité du Vin museum, which is a much bigger, slicker production. There are several sections with many stations that are activated by the included audioguide headset. The ones I liked best were the innovations alley and wine-making details. SMS and I also went to the wine oracle exhibit to see which wine we were. The descriptions were wildly flattering, so we both felt pretty good about ourselves after that one.

After the tour, we went to the 8th floor for an included glass of wine. I ended up having a Lebanese red that the wine pourer recommended (he seemed meh on the Bordeaux options) and SMS had a Crémant. We ended up talking to a dental hygienist named Lori for awhile, which was a lot of fun. She was a vibrant woman in her 60s solo traveling on a break. She normally travels with friends, but no one could get the time off. She has three adult sons, is divorced after a 30 year marriage, works for a German dentist in an American-expat heavy German town near Stuttgart, and basically, we know a lot about her! It would have been fun to hang out more, but we also wanted to move on. We had a dinner reservation, but we ended up cancelling it after our next find which was the…

Les Halles Bacalan

Les Halles Bacalan! This was awesome. This was the cutesy, “curated” (SMS) food hall we were looking for. It reminded me a lot of the Torvehaller in Copenhagen near the Nörreport station. My parents’ former apartment was near there when they lived there in the late 2000s.

Anyway, we had the best time! Initially, we wandered to display counter with the most delicious looking pintxos. We briefly conferenced and decided we wanted to eat at the market. So, we started with a few pintxos. Then we sat at a seafood bar counter and shared razor-clams, fries, and another dish that escapes me. Although the razor back clams weren’t exactly what I was expecting (oops!), they were really tasty. We had a really nice end to our day at the Halles.