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All posts for the month July, 2024

Soaking up cafe culture on the leafy streets of beautiful Bordeaux, just steps from our hotel

Our hotel was an imposssibly elegant restored mansion

Bordeaux is kind of a stopover for us — to break up the trip down the west coast of France to Biarritz. But it’s a darn nice place to stop for a couple days. We’ve been here twice before, and it just might be one of our favorite cities in France.

What makes Bordeaux such a great place? It might be the super elegant neo-classical palaces that line the river Garonne. It might be the energy in the sprawling pedestrianized city center — one of the world’s largest. It might be the prevalence of great food, bustling cafes, and lively bars. And it certainly has to do with the wine culture that overlays everything in this city and the region.

Oddly, following our first visit to Bordeaux 10 years ago, we wrote that “We just didn’t get it” when it came to drinking Bordeaux wines. We loved the city and maybe even the presence of wine culture, but we just didn’t appreciate the wines themselves when we tried them. For many years, I’ve said that red Bordeaux wines taste like licking a Band-Aid.

But this time was different! Over the past decade we’ve both learned to appreciate the blends that make up Bordeaux wines a bit more, particularly the reds. And earlier in this trip we’ve begun dabbling a bit in some of the Bordeaux whites. And here in Bordeaux this time we learned a bit more about the geography, the grapes, and the wines by visiting the Cité du Vin, a huge museum about all things wine. All of this has enhanced our love for this beautiful city and its great wine tradition.

We had a lovely dinner just underneath the 11th century Cathedral of Saint André

A tour of the Cité du Vin wine museum helped enhance our appreciation for the local hooch

We’ve also come to appreciate the super plump and mildly briny Gillardeau oysters from the West coast of France

This amazing park was about a block from our hotel

Another world class dinner in Bordeaux

A grand fountain on the way home from dinner

We watched some of the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics with locals in an atmospheric pub

A gorgeous street scape in Bordeaux, including our Olympics pub on the right

Mark in one of La Rochelle’s innumerable arcades

La Rochelle was a real surprise and a treat. It’s a small city, population around 75,000, but the historic center, the old port, and the green spaces all pack a serious punch. I just thought it was one of the most beautiful urban places we’ve been.

Our hotel was perfectly situated, right next to a long, narrow-ish park with nice walking trails that led down to the coast, but also on the edge of the old town. The buildings in that area were all this old, faded yellowish-white, a couple stories high, many of them with block after block of arcades to protect you from … well, presumably heat and rain, but that was no issue for us. We continue to have just about perfect weather on this trip, now up in the mid-70s during the day but that of course is totally pleasant.

The lovely park right near our hotel

Our first full day in town we rented bikes and rode out to Île de Ré, a cute not-so-little island just off the coast. It’s connected to the mainland by a bridge that runs a bit over a mile, and I had this vision of some long, flat, easy-to-bike motorway. Yeah, not exactly – it was a pretty strenuous climb up and up and up before we could head down and out to the island. Once there the biking was nice, the food was great, and then we turned around and biked home.

Mark biking towards an abandoned abbey on Île de Ré

There’s one fun piece of history from La Rochelle. Back in the 17th century it was a major center of the Huguenot (French Protestant) cause. But when Louis XIV reversed Henry IV’s Edict of Nantes and took away the Protestant’s civil rights, a bunch of Huguenots boarded ships and settled what became the very French town of New Rochelle a little north of Manhattan. And just coincidentally, a bunch of our closest friends in New York live in New Rochelle. So we had a wonderful little time in the Mother City!

The courtyard of La Rochelle’s old city hall

The old port is a bustling and beautiful part of the city

The streets of La Rochelle

Evening in La Rochelle

A beautiful farmer’s market right in the center of everything

Our friend Shideh had told Mark that the oysters here were some of the best in the world. We tried them … and she was right!

As usual we continue to have amazing meals here, including this soft-poached egg on something like ratatouille, with some tapenade and parmesan crisp on the side. And that was just the start!

Here I am getting ready to tackle that bridge out it Île de Ré

The abandoned abbey on the island

More scenery from the ride

Lunch al fresco on the island

Not to be confused with lunch al fresco back in La Rochelle

A nightcap on our little balcony

Breakfast was in a beautiful little garden behind our hotel

One more shot of the bustling old port

And then, just when you think you’ve seen it all … the bathroom at our lunch stop on the bike ride was this crazy mirrored room with the oddest toilet and water tank we’ve ever seen.

Does he look happy? We had just learned that Biden had dropped out of the presidential race and were celebrating with some Havana Club rum. Go Kamala!

Another two-night stop, another lovely French city. In this case we stopped in Nantes, the sixth-largest city in France. (For what it’s worth, when this trip is over we will have been in all ten of the largest cities in the country.) A fun part of the stop was our residence, the Hotel Sozo. The hotel took over an abandoned chapel some years ago and turned it into a hotel, keeping as much of the historic architecture and even stained glass windows as they could. Our room was tiny, but it oozed personality.

Mark as we prepared to check into our converted chapel hotel

Another highlight was the fact that just outside our hotel was the city’s oldest and probably most beautiful park, the Jardin des Plantes. Created in 1807, it was a delight to walk through the park as we went out to explore the city.

And there was plenty to explore in our quick stop. Sadly, there were two challenges in really experiencing Nantes. First, the cathedral looked impressive but was closed for what seemed to be pretty substantial renovations. And second, lots of restaurants are closed in Nantes both Saturday and Sunday evenings, the two nights we were there, Sunday in particular. And on Sunday pretty much everything is closed except for touristy cafes, so the city center felt like more like a ghost town than we would have liked.

Still, there was plenty to keep us engaged. There was an art museum that I really liked. In many ways I am simple: I like an art museum that takes me through whatever period it covers logically and systematically. I particularly like museums that take you with clear signage from one room to the next. The Nantes museum, covering art from the 14th to the 20th centuries, checked all those boxes and had a surprisingly good collection of modern art.

Similarly, the old Ducal Palace had a museum of the history of Nantes that was pretty good. It could have used more English translations, but I’m not complaining too much. In particular, they did not shy away from acknowledging the city’s role in the French slave trade. Because of its position at the mouth of the Loire River, Nantes was responsible for just about half of that shameful history and they covered it extensively.

On the ramparts surrounding the Ducal Palace, seen in the background

There is one other important piece of history from Nantes. In 1598 Henry IV signed the Edict of Nantes in the Ducal Palace here. Henry – who was born protestant but, famously considering the crown of France worthy of a mass, converted to Catholicism – upheld Catholicism as the established religion of the state but at the same time gave French Protestants significant political rights. The result was the end of the 35-year French Wars of Religion.

Finally, one more thing I learned in the museum. Mark and I were both a little confused over the fact that this was once the seat of the Dukes of Brittany but is no longer in the official French region of Brittany. What gives? Well, according to one exhibit in the museum, the collaborationist Vichy government in 1941 restructured things and put Nantes in what was then the Angers region. Today it is the capital of the Pays de la Loire region, one of 18 regions in the country, and it is still pretty controversial that it is not part of Brittany region. We’ll let them fight it out.

The impressive but inaccessible cathedral

For us though, our memory of Nantes will be highlighted by one thing. On our last evening we were walking to dinner when I got a text from my brother Al: “Biden dropped out”. Yikes! Ever since that fateful and awful debate we’d been waiting for this. And in fact while we were walking on that Sunday evening I was getting genuinely angry at Biden for clinging to power so desperately. And then in the flash of a text it was as though a new era had opened: once again, we have a fighting chance to win in November. Makes for a pretty eventful stop in Nantes!

The interior of our chapel hotel. Those stained glass windows at the top were part of the view from our room.

Nantes had some fun public art

That odd tree-like thing was art, too

Did I mention food? Here I am at La Cigale, a classic French brasserie with a beautiful interior and the best steak tartare I’ve had on this trip.

The only reason we were in the interior, though, is because of the rain. We started the meal on their terrace, and then it started raining. We were under an umbrella and you can see how the pavement is getting wet. Then it started raining hard, so they moved us inside. Thus we got to experience both the beautiful outdoor seating in a great square and the great interior.

Before the rain, though, this cute little kid and I started making faces at each other. His English was no better than my French, but when you can stick tongues out what more do you need?

And speaking of new friends. On our first night Mark wanted to stop at a bar after dinner. The martini was one of the worst ever, but Galien and Clotilde here wanted to make friends and so that worked a lot better than the cocktails. They’re coming to New York in December so – since we exchanged contact info – perhaps we will see them again!

And finally one last new friend. While I was out walking one afternoon I came back and there was Mark sitting in the lobby instead of our room. What’s going on, I wondered. Then I saw the cat on Mark’s footstool and I understood.