Wine and Monuments

We just returned home from a beautiful weekend in Bordeaux! What a gorgeous city and wonderful region of France. We drove the 4 hours to Bordeaux through rolling hills of French countryside. We arrived in Bordeaux to find that it is a quite large sprawling city of more than 700,000 people in the metropolitan area. The city center is beautifully maintained and obviously quite wealthy. The city sits on a wide river approximately 100 km from the ocean and was once the first and largest port in France. When we arrived, we grabbed a quick lunch before heading to the Office of Tourism where we met our bus for a tour of the Medoc wine region. On the 5 hour tour, we learned all sorts of good info about French wines and were able to tour two chateaux where grapes are grown and wine is produced and bottled. The kids were super and really enjoyed all the history and beautiful scenery. One of the castles where wine was produced was built in the 11th century and beautifully restored just recently. We picked up a few good bottles of wine before heading back to the city and checking into our hotel. Our hotel was on a fantastic, narrow little cobblestone street just off the main promenade of the city center. We were able to spend some time wandering around before we found a great little cafe for a delicious dinner. We noticed right away that the architecture in Bordeaux is much different than around here. It is much more Mediterranean in style with limestone and clay tiles. The food was also different with more Spanish influences and a complete absence of crepes. Josh and I had a great dinner of tuna steaks while the kids enjoyed salmon and steak hache (hamburgers sans bun to you and me). We tried hard to ignore the mounds of steak tartare that the people seated next to us were eating. This morning, we woke up to another gorgeous but cold day and immediately headed out to the Office of Tourism where we again met a prearranged tour group. This time, we went on a 2 hour walking tour of the city center where we learned all about the architecture, history and monuments of the city. Just amazing and beautiful! After the walking tour, we struck out on our own a bit to do a little exploring. We were approached by a homeless man at one point, asking for money. Josh tried to plead off by saying that he didn't speak French, only to have the man switch into beautiful English! After some window shopping, we were hard pressed to find any restaurants open on Sunday afternoon so we hit a little pub that only had one thing on the menu - croque-monsieur with a green salad. We discovered what a fantastic hot ham and cheese sandwich that is and enjoyed every bite! After a quick ride on the carousel in the city square (there is always a carousel in the city square around here), we headed home. Beautiful! Highly recommended as a place to visit.....