On May 17th we arrived in St. Emilion after cruising down the highway for awhile. What a charming town!
And, yes, we did make our way down there — found a street that wasn’t too sloped.
And a nice ruin on the way out of town…
Back on the road to Bordeaux. We stayed at a Best Western — the Grand Hotel Francois. It is located in an older area of downtown which is pedestrian only with limited exceptions–we needed a passcode to enter the area. John off-loaded me and the bags, then had to drive out of the area to park the car — where we left it until we left town.
I ended up switching us to a handicapped room there because I discovered that all of their rooms had only a queen sized bed, except for the handicapped room which had a king! Good thing to watch for!!
We skipped dinner after our late lunch and John did a really great thing — he set up a driver and van for the next morning at 10:30 a.m. We had a nice tour, first stopping at the main cathedral, St. Andre.
We drove around for awhile. I really liked seeing the Ukrainian flag flying over an entrance to a public building. We entered another smaller church whose windows have been replaced; I prefer the older ones.
After driving a little more we came to the Cite du Vin. National Geographic rated this the 7th best museum in the world. It had lots of information about how wine is made, its history, best areas for growth and way more. We watched several movies and saw lots of exhibits before ending up on the 8th floor with views and a glass on wine (included with entry).
John stomped on the grapes!
And back down and across the street to the food stalls for lunch. Embarrassingly, John had a healthy salad while I had three of the six churros, hot from the fire…..and delicious. John threw the rest out later without asking me — I almost shot him!
That evening after a little more driving around we walked to the Brasserie Bordelaise, written up as having the best steak frites in Bordeaux. We shared a salad, shared the steak frites, then each ordered the profiteroles. The latter caused a raised eyebrow from our waiter — you’ll see why in a minute!
Amazingly, we did it justice!!!!
On our last morning in Bordeaux we jus wandered around — first to go see the magnificent fountain we had driven by the day before. Hope you like it; we took LOTS of pictures of it.
We walked on the the “Mirror of Water”, the largest reflecting pool in the world. It was meant to be walked in or played in by children and is intentionally only a couple of inches deep. So I played. There were beautiful gardens around it.
It was pretty cool out so the children weren’t playing in the water…..but I was!
The view across from the Wall of Water.
We wandered into a random, but very beautiful church on our way back to the hotel. I loved all the tiles on the wall the said “Merci” to the saint. Also the memorial to those who died in the war. It is the Eglise St. Pierre.
We concluded our morning walking to Uniqlo, John’s and Kathryn’s favorite inexpensive shopping stop, but had to have a little ice cream on the way.
Now it was time to start heading back to Paris…..but we found a treat along the way; a nice hotel and spa, but that’s next.
Beth
