Two weekends ago we went to Bordeaux. Dave had a conference down there so I flew down on Friday and met him and we explored the area for two days. Initial impressions - it's pretty. It's sort of like a mini-Paris (would they be offended by that? Would the Parisians?) They don't have a ton of bakeries, much to our chagrin, but they do sell a hell of a lot of caneles. They like wine. Well, duh! They really, really like wine. Am I stating the obvious?
So what did we do? Mainly we walked around the city. It's fairly large, but the main part, the old part, is where most tourists go, and is the main shopping and restaurant area. Oh yeah, I forgot to put that in my initial impressions above. They have a TON of restaurants there. And rather diverse ones as well. We saw quite a few Asian restaurants (Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese), so the whole city is not comprised solely of French bistros. We ate at two good ones. The first, Brasserie Bordelaise seemed to be known for steak. I am not kidding, everyone in that place ate steak, EXCEPT FOR DAVE. We sat down to eat about 10pm and even people that sat down when we were having dessert, about 11:15pm, were eating steak. BUT NOT DAVE. My steak was good (sorry, no pix, I haven't progressed to that yet). He liked the chicken, I ate his stuffing, we both ate the fries.
The second, La Tupina, was also quite good. I read that the restaurant gets generally good reviews but is frequented by tourists, and damn it if that wasn't true. Literally EVERY table was filled with tourists. Want proof? Well, we had a nice little table out on a small balcony over looking the street, but we were still close to two other tables, too close in fact. One table was filled with five people, two women, three men, perhaps from...I'm not sure. At one point they were talking about their favorite restaurants in Napa (Rutherford Grill, Mustards. TOURISTS) but I didn't get the sense they were Californians. Anyhoodle, when the waitress came to take their order one man said "how you doin'?" and then proceeded to ask her if she knew where that phrase originated. Of course she had NO clue. Why would she, as he was talking about the TV show Friends. Yes, he was quoting Joey from Friends. To a French waitress. Maybe she watched the show, who knows, but I sincerely doubt that Joey's catchphrase registered highly enough with her that after the show ended in 2004 she kept it stored in her head in the hopes that an American tourist would quiz her on it one day.
The other table was filled with European tourists who asked if the wine list they were perusing was the only one, or whether they could see the reserve list since what was on offer clearly wasn't good enough. Well, excuse me. I also think we ended up in about three pictures taken of the front of the restaurant, you know, for the scrapbook. I had the braised lamb shoulder which was very good and very tender. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And Dave enjoyed his CHICKEN. Yes, he had chicken AGAIN. I ate his stuffing again.
We also went to Saint-Emilion for the day, a pretty little town about 40 minutes away from Bordeaux by train. And you know what? They like wine there too. Sheesh. It's very cute though, and luckily the German-to-us tourists we followed from the train station to the town knew the way. We followed them blindly, as did two other girls, and the Germans who were actually American led us the right way (it's about a 15 minute walk). Their hiking gear threw me off, it screamed German. We walked around, saw the town from a few different vantage points, looked at some grapevines, ate some mediocre pizza (too harsh, Dave?), and then went back to Bordeaux to catch our flight home.
We stayed at the Hotel Seeko'o, which is a very strange name. It was fine. Our room, a junior suite (la di dah) was fairly large. Truthfully, the lowest room category is a junior suite, so go figure. But for Europe it was a large room. The location was convenient, and yet not. The hotel is across from a new-ish development that converted warehouses into restaurants and shops (outlet shops for the most part). The warehouses get a fair amount of foot traffic, and a lot of the city converges on the river front to walk, ride bikes, stroll, but you need to take a tram into the main part of town.
A really artistic* shot of the Seeko'o at night. *Yes, this picture is technically a mistake.
That fluffy thing in the picture above is the curtain separating the hotel bedroom from bathroom.
Overall, it was a nice weekend, we weren't pressured to run around and see a ton of sites, we ate well, and we enjoyed walking around. And the area around Saint-Emilion was really pretty. But I don't feel a need to go back. I can cross it off my list.
A new feature - RILEY RATING!**
I am going to start rating cities based on if Riley would like them and whether they seem to be dog friendly. I give Bordeaux 4 out of 5 Rileys.
The city is flat, there is the nice river front walk, there were a TON of dogs (yet it wasn't too dirty, if you know what I mean), there was a dog bar (so chic! although the beverage on offer was nasty), we saw a dog hogging a tram seat so dogs can ride the rails, and Riley would probably like the caneles. But we didn't see many parks, so there could be a grass issue, or lack thereof.
Au revoir for now! Or I should say arrivederci as we are off to Italy today.
** I hope to design a cute Riley Rating image soon. Hopefully by November...
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