44 - What comes around, Garonne's around - Bordeaux
Saturday, 27 January 2024
I got to luxuriously sleep in today and then quietly sip coffee while breakfasting on on a chocolatine and doing my Duolingo lessons for the day. Earlier in the week, the forecast had made it seem like Saturday would be really nice but in the morning it was cloudy with some light mist. Oh well, that was the weather in Dax; today, I was headed to Bordeaux. It's a new activity for me this trip: playing host to a friend coming to visit! Her train was scheduled to arrive in Bordeaux around 13:30 so I was on the road a little after 11:30.
Thus far I've thought that aside from a few traffic signs I hadn't seen before, you don't necessarily need to know French to drive around the countryside; my drive to Bordeaux had me questioning that conclusion. About 30 km south of Bordeaux, a police vehicle suddenly merged in front of me, turned on its lights and put on its right turn signal; further study of the police vehicle at highway speed revealed the word "Douanes" and a LED sign between the flashing lights saying "Suivez Nous".
Heureusement, I understood that this meant I was being asked by customs officers to follow their vehicle. We pulled into a truck rest stop, there I discovered that a 2nd customs vehicle (one with more subtle lights) had followed behind me. Fortunately for me, my car was empty and I had nothing to declare, but it almost seemed a waste having two vehicles and six officers asking me questions and searching my car to find nothing. It got me wondering what they could have been looking for: I was well into France on a highway coming from Spain where there isn't an economic border between the countries. Oh well, good thing I knew to follow them and that I didn't yet have my friend's suitcase to be searched; else we might have had to surrender some peanut butter M&Ms for being criminally delicious.
From my encounter with customs, it was a short drive to the train station of Bordeaux. I'd parked in the garage and just reached the entrance right on time to greet her. We didn't linger around the station, but put the suitcase in the trunk and made our way to a parking garage closer to the center of city. From the garage, we walked along the Garonne river with the plan to work our way towards a museum, La Cité du Vin. Thinking back on it, I'd thought that we'd missed the Miroir d'eau (a reflective pool along the river walk) but now I realize that they'd drained the water for the winter 😅
We had a late lunch at a place called the Makila café, the restaurant theme was Basque (a makila is the unique walking stick used by Basque men) but the menu seemed more reflective of the Gironde province. It irked me a little, but despite asking for a carafe of water the waiter brought us a bottle of still water. I guess that’s the equivalent of a tax on conducting business in English. Still, the food was good and it was good to sit down to catch up.
While wrapping up at the restaurant, we checked online what time the city of wine would close: turns out it was already closed and would remain closed for several more days. Oops, c'est la vie. Instead, we popped our heads into an Arena swim supply store. We'd both swam competitively in university so it was nostalgic to browse the wares; oddly, I feel it's surprisingly difficult to find a brick and mortar swim supply store these days. Maybe they're rare in France too because one of the sales associates encouraged us to take as many pictures as we liked and tag Arena France on Instagram 🤣. Afterwards, we walked back through the city, appreciating the various streets and parks as we made our way towards the historic downtown.
Near the public gardens, we encountered a French woman who was curious about my beret. She said (en français) she’d only seen two people wearing true Basque berets that day and turns out neither was French 😂. She followed up by asking why I bought my beret and seemed pretty pleased with my response of it being a souvenir and that I think of the beret as an iconic French item. She seemed genuinely pleased at having a conversation with an American in French and we chit-chatted a bit (me turning aside in English periodically) to explain the where, when, how, and why of our time here. Turns out our conversational partner, Dominique, is a jurist who worked with the Lycée Montesquieu in town; she'd had a good American friend growing up, I didn't catch everything but it was something about the friend's dad collecting post cards for some famous collection. She also mentioned that the artist Francisco Goya, spent his last years in Bordeaux; his house is now a school for learning Spanish. It was a completely unexpected but pleasant street encounter, I guess the beret really does work as a conversation starter.
Sadly the public gardens were closing but we stopped by a bar to refresh and then walked down Rue St. Catherine, the main pedestrian thruway in Bordeaux. We didn’t buy anything but it was an interesting, busy street at night. We noticed that the overhead Noel lights had been swapped out for red paper lanterns in preparation for lunar new year. We also remarked that there were a lot more students in Bordeaux than I'd seen in other French towns: a closer look at the faces revealed plenty of university students to be having drinks and smoking in outdoor seating.
Pretty soon it was time for dinner and we ate at a restaurant near parking garage. While I'm sure the serveuse could have managed in English, I ordered for us in French and was able to get a carafe of tap water (I'm slowly building the required data to prove my hypothesis). There were many other etrangers in the restaurant: several Americans at the table to our right and seemingly two Dutch guys to our left. To ensure my friend didn't leave France without trying them, I ordered escargot as an entree; turns out the Americans nearby had been curious but weren't ready to take on a dozen mollusks. My friend has a talent for quickly making buddies and we let them try some escargot too; if not for a 2 hour drive home we might have joined them in their next venture in the night. While we're not entirely sure where the guy at their table was from, we know that one woman had just arrived from Pennsylvania to teach a course in Bordeaux and another was a student studying abroad from Boston.
Exiting the restaurant revealed it to be a foggy night in Bordeaux. The fog must've been following the river because once we got on the highway, visibility quickly improved. Fortunately, no run ins with the law on the drive back to Dax.
It's been a long time since I’ve been to Bordeaux (last visit was summer of 2018); it was nice to see it again. It felt like a very different city in winter than when I visited in summer: for starters I wasn't drenched in sweat 😂 but also it was less crowded. It still had some areas with lots of people but it wasn't noir du monde like I remember the summer scene.
Comments
Post a Comment