Our hotel was just a block or two away from this big metal structure. It seemed most popular.

So this is it. After 15 months outside the U.S., we head back tomorrow. A couple days in Minneapolis, a week on Lake Vermillion in Northern Minnesota, Labor Day weekend in Michigan, then Boston, Miami Beach, Des Moines, Washington, Las Vegas, Utah, and Los Angeles. Interestingly, even internally I don’t think of it as going “home.” We’re looking forward to some visits and we’re going to see part of the U.S. – Utah’s national parks – that we’ve never seen. But it’s really not going home, since we don’t have a home there and we’ll soon enough be back on the road.

[caption id="attachment_3540" align="alignleft" width="300"] … and beef tartare for the main course.

Oh yeah, and then there’s been that whole pinched nerve thing. I got her kind of optimistic that it had been a one-off anomaly and now I’d be back to normal. Alas, not to be, unless (god forbid) this is the new normal. Interestingly, whatever was wrong doesn’t really affect my back at all now, but has migrated down to my arm. And while it’s nothing like the days in Poitiers, it’s not nothing, either. So I’m still taking pain pills and wearing a silly neck brace most of the time. The good news is I have an appointment with an acupuncturist in Duluth next week, so he should be able to fix me right up. (Thanks Becky!)

One of the highlights was a long afternoon coffee break with John Aravosis, prominent blogger and an old friend of Mark’s from DC days

I keep thinking that with 15 months, 53 books, 29 countries on three continents, and untold miles on the ground and through water, I should have some important lessons to share. You’d think I would, but maybe not so much. OK, here’s one: multiple changes of clothes are overrated. If I think of any more on that long plane ride to the midwest I’ll share them later.

In case you’re wondering, though, if we’re getting tired of all this travel, the answer is a definitive no. To be honest, we’re a little tired of traveling in Western Europe, just because it’s so easy. We’re both itching to get back to more exotic places. So from LA we’re heading to the Yucatan for a couple weeks and then probably going to some non-tourist Caribbean islands, including Haiti, to get our sense of adventure back. Starting to research and plan that gets me excited again!

That big metal structure was all lit up at night

My highlights are always reading breaks. This is in the Tuileries, but I also spent time in Parc Monceau and the Luxembourg Gardens

Farewell Paris and Europe – this was the view from our hotel room balcony

Wine is everywhere in Bordeaux, including big bottles in the middle of the sidewalk. I thought my grape t-shirt was appropriate for our wine tour.

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.

Bordeaux’s Public Garden. As beautiful as Boston’s but it’s surrounded by 19th century neoclassical French architecture. Advantage Bordeaux.

More of the Public Garden

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.

One of the chateaus from our tour. Most of the grand buildings – including this one – are no longer occupied as no one can afford to live in places like this. They’re still beautiful, though.

Château Lafite Rothschild. With wines selling for well over $1,000 a bottle this is the definition of over-the-top Bordeaux excellence. And apparently for people who have more money than brains.

I ate one of these grapes near one of the châteaus we toured. Only later did I learn it’s actually part of the Lafite Rothschild estate. I figure that grape was worth $2 or so.

Touring three wineries we saw a lot of barrels and tanks. They all pretty much look the same.

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.

Mark was too shy to use this picture in his blog post of the dunes, so I’m including it here. I love the way you can see the forest so far below our time to the top of the dune.

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?

I had to include this as an example of how technology changes the travel experience. I was in the park while Mark was out doing other stuff. I texted and suggested he join me, but he didn’t know where the park was or where I was in it. So I used my iPhone to pull up a map of where I was, with that blue dot my location. I took a screen shot of the map and texted it to him. Pretty cool, huh?