Six days in Bordeaux was a real treat. We loved the city, one of my favorite places in the nearly 15 months since we left the States. What was it that made it so cool?

1) Beautiful parks. There were a few great public park spaces, particularly the fabulous Public Garden. I’ve long thought Boston’s Public Garden is one of the most beautiful public parks in the U.S., and the Public Garden in Bordeaux compares very favorably. I spent parts of two days just lazing in the park with my book, a wonderful way to spend a few hours. The one strange thing was the weird weather. You’d have 40 minutes lying on the grass under warm sunshine and suddenly it would start raining. You’d head under a tree for 10 minutes and the sun would come back out. Repeat over and over throughout the day. Strange but still beautiful.

2) Wine education. If Bordeaux is known for anything, it’s the most expensive and supposedly fabulous red wines in the world. You’ll note, of course, my use of the word “supposedly.” We just didn’t get it. We were hoping we would, hoping that if we drank Bordeaux wines with meals and splurge on an expensive day-long wine tour of three Medoc wineries we’d finally get it. Well, we learned something during those six days: we still don’t particularly like Bordeaux wines. I tended to like the cheapest – not cheaper, but cheapest – wines better than the expensive ones we tasted on the tour. So now we’re ready to just be done with it. We don’t particularly like Bordeaux wines. Learning that is worth something.

3) Great ambience. Mark covered this in the last post. The city is alive. It has an enormous pedestrian-only section, but enough that I’d get lost and confused. In most cities you think of “the pedestrian street,” or at best the couple of big pedestrian streets. Here, though, there are multiple big shopping streets, going every direction, closed to traffic, so I got lost more than usual. The city’s longtime mayor, Alain Juppé, has made a hugely successful effort to clean up the city. Everyone who’s been there for a few years talks about how he’s gotten building owners to clean the facades, put in a great tram system, cleared out the old port detritus, and closed much of the center city to traffic. Juppé has been mayor since 1995, and during much of that time served in the national government as well, including stints as both Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. Hard to imagine someone in the U.S. remaining mayor while serving in those posts but apparently it’s not that unusual in France, and he seems to have done it with remarkable success (except for the conviction for corruption, but enough about that unpleasantness).

4) The dunes. Yeah, Mark blogged about that already, but they were still a highlight.

5) Finally, great running. It’s flat, especially going along the river front that Mayor Juppé cleaned up so nicely. And twice (twice!) while out for my morning run there were great rainbows over the city. Mark says that if I didn’t get pictures they don’t count, but I think you have to give a Mayor credit if he can not only clean up and modernize a city but even arrange for regular morning rainbows.

OK, we’re done with Bordeaux. Now it’s on to Poitiers for a couple days and then Paris. Did we ever mention how much we love traveling by train in Europe?

We decided to spend almost a week in Bordeaux, and so far the place is living up to my high expectations. Bordeaux combines so much of what we love about European cities — monumental architecture, great city planning, and lots of urban energy.

The city wraps around a smooth curve of the Garonne river and it is really loaded up with 19th century neo-classical architecture. Huge swaths of the city center have been pedestrianized, and the urban core has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. The streets are teeming with public art, street performances, and people enjoying it all.

Yesterday we took a train to the seaside town of Arcachon, where we rented bikes and rode out to a sand dune called the Dune de Pilat. Even knowing that this was the largest sand dune in Europe, I wasn’t really expecting all that much. I mean, what’s the big deal about a hill of sand between the beach and the shore? You see that in lots of beach areas.

But once we get there it was pretty incredible — a truly massive pile of sand with a life of its own. It apparently moves several meters a year, slowly swallowing up the forest inland. It’s already taken out some roads and buildings as well, including a hotel. After an arduous climb to the top we were rewarded with incredible views — and our first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean since we left Boston!

Today we are embarking on another day trip out of town to encounter some of what Bordeaux is really known for — wine. I’m intrigued whether an all-day visit to wine country here will enhance my relationship to Bordeaux wines, which I have never really understood. This region produces the most celebrated and expensive wines in the world, yet I have rarely (including in the last three days here) tasted a Bordeaux wine that did not taste to me like licking a Band-Aid.

With two weeks left before we catch a flight from Paris to visit family and friends in the US, we left Barcelona to make a pass through Southwestern France. Our first stop was the spectacular medieval fortress town of Carcassonne. I’ve wanted to see Carcassonne since hearing my parents rave about it years ago.

This was just a two-night stay, and we spent a great deal of our time here doing some necessary travel planning. But we were also pretty immersed in the medieval ‘feel’ of the place since we stayed in a gorgeous hotel inside the walls of the hilltop fortress known as La Cité. Not only was the hotel itself fantastic, but they upgraded us to one of their best suites. With beautiful views of the castle and the ramparts of Carcassonne, our elegant living room made an ideal place to do our work and soak up the atmosphere. Next stop: Bordeaux.