Bordeaux

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.