15 posts tagged “bordeaux”

If you are thinking of visiting the Charente Maritime area (about an hour from Bordeaux) I would like to recommend a new blog in English about that area and its attractions. 

Link http://lostinfrance2.blog.co.uk/.

This French cafe bar is situated on the main shopping street (rue Ste- Catherine) in Bordeaux. I've been there so often on my holidays that I feel like it is a little home from home. It is at the end of a little covered shopping arcade on the left hand side walking down from the Opera House Square (place de la Comedie). It's nothing fancy just typically French with pleasant staff. A great place to practice your French as they have little English. Enjoy.

fave cafe in Bordeaux

I would like to share two personal hotel recommendations in Bordeaux with any travellers planning a visit. They are both small hotels that I have had the pleasure of staying in on my three trips to Bordeaux for my holidays.

First is the Hotel Notre Dame a charming two star hotel in the centre of the Chartrons district of Bordeaux. It is situated at 36-38 rue Notre Dame. To walk into the city centre only takes about ten minutes and can be achieved along the river front or through the back streets of the Antiques district.

The rooms are very comfortable and the one I had- as a single visitor – had a nice large bath/shower and a comfy double bed. Breakfast was a simple affair with a choice of tea/coffee/hot chocolate and a fruit juice. The croissants were pleasantly warm and there was a small baguette that I personally found a bit tough. The same breakfast is offered each day so if you are planning a long stay and want some variety there are plenty of coffee places nearby.

In the area around the hotel there are plenty of cafes and restaurants and some of them have English speaking staff. You can also go direct into the city centre of course. Avoid the Golden Triangle area if you are on a budget.

Max, the hotel manager spoke very good English and the other auxiliary staff spoke a little. Always a good chance to brush up on your French I feel.

I stayed for 14 nights on a reasonably tight budget and was pleased with the value I got for 810€ including breakfast and local taxes = 54€ per night.

Positives: Very friendly welcome. Good location. Clean comfortable rooms. Close to city centre. Close to tram system. Good value.

Negatives: There are two floors and no lift. The stairway is quite tight and awkward to heave suitcases up and down. Bit noisy at times with people arriving at odd hours. Nothing out of the ordinary for a small hotel however.

hotel sign

 The second hotel (which I stayed in twice) is the Hotel de l'Opera at 35 rue Espirit-Des-Lois. The hotel is in an 18^th Century building. My visits were in 2004 and 2005 so details may have changed.The link will give you bang up-to-date details.

Again, I felt welcomed at the hotel and it was a family run establishment and the premises are situated right in the centre of Bordeaux alongside the actual Opera House.

The room was quite small with a double bed each time and had a view out to the side of the Opera House and the bathroom facilities were adequate (shower, sink and toilet only). A big bonus was the small lift to each floor. I recall there were five floors to this hotel. The room was clean.I believe that this hotel has 28 rooms.

Breakfast was the same continental breakfast I experienced at Hotel Notre Dame.

At my last look in the 2008 Michelin Guide the rooms for a single person were advertised at 45/55 € per night. Breakfast an additional 6€.

Positives: Very friendly staff. Lift to rooms. Secure building at night with security gate on street level. Reception is in the bright breakfast room on the second floor.Rooms were surprisingly quiet for city centre.

Negatives: None really. The only reason I didn’t stay here again was that the hotel was fully booked.

Contact details: Hotel Notre Dame: 05 56 52 88 24

e-mail hnd33@free.fr

Contact details: Hotel de l’Opéra:    05 56 81 41 27

e-mail hotel.opera.bx@wanadoo.fr

Taxi from airport approx 40€

Jetbus price approx 7€ to Quinconces Square (city centre).

When I got back from the trip out I was mighty hungry and walked into town along one of the posh streets and ended up at the Grand Café for something to eat. What you might call, an expensive mistake repaired somewhat, by some fun observations. The sun was setting and reflecting in a golden glow on the buildings around. A Vespa scooter whizzed past. There was some thin music from inside, an accordion and now and then some singing. I thought to myself, “Can this get anymore clichéd French!” Pass me my beret!

A Mafiosi man was smoking dangerously and eating greasy looking chips nearer the street. There were three men in open jackets nearby and a buxom cyclist sailed past, keen, no doubt to get home. Another cyclist, pre-occupied by the sounds from his ipod momentarily saw himself glide by in a myriad of reflections – shop windows, sunglasses, and scooter mirrors and possibly his own sub-conscious idea of self.  There was an older man on the way home from the office doing a job he never really enjoyed. Two younger women, whose evening will start out with light banter and will end at home with them on the sofa moaning about their ineffectual preening boyfriends, passed by in their black clicking heels.  An older couple- she stroking his hand and talking about the supermarket shopping sat close by oblivious to my note taking. A cool breeze started up and bus horn parped. The Mafiosi man coughed and left whilst fumbling for his red cigarette packet. The writer coughs in sympathy. The waiter brings more bread to the writer who has already ravenously eaten the first lot.

A ‘Paris Je t’aime’ actress look-a-like sat close by and seemed to be having a   very unhappy day. Fritz, her husband, who had gorged on les frites sat opposite her in his Mr Toad blue suit and ordered another bottle of wine, most likely for his consumption as the expectation of the wine arriving seems to perk him up. I was really enjoying this cavalcade of misfits and the opportunity to observe and make amusing notes.

 ‘Je t’aime’, whom I have now christened Mitzi has just given Fritzi an intense telling off. This was fun-watching folk, thought I, and some way of me getting something back for foolishly choosing the expensive roadside table. During my observations I had ordered steak frites. Just fancied a nice juicy steak.

While I was sitting there, there was visual access to another café bar and the clientele sitting at their tables. Across the way a woman with sunglasses on her head and thick dark hair was provocatively licking and tongue probing the remainder of her chocolate drink she ordered not half an hour ago. The man with her, we’ll call him, Hubby, was bouncing his old shoes shod feet in years-old lack of patience. She got her reptilian tongue right down to the last wet chocolate remnant sitting in the furthest reaches of her glass, and scooped up the chocolate with great satisfaction. They left, his old denim hat matching her faded denim jeans and they faded from my memory with these notes only supporting their existence. Oh, how Noël Coward that sounded!

Fritzi and Mitzi have five glasses lined up. His current glass has grubby finger prints on it and her vessel is smeared with ‘faded decadence’ by Dior, lipstick stains. Dickens would have had a field day with these two grotesques.

I’m in mid-meal and a woman passes by with a zip dripping from her long woollen jumper neck. I stopped my masticating and noted that she had very short blonde hair and was arm-in-arm with another man or woman. They had disappeared around the corner and it was hard to tell. The other person was very smart in a white shirt and pleated trousers. I put my pen down for a while and ate my food. It was nice enough and I had a dessert and then asked for the bill, paid it and left the café reeling from the price. I nipped their loo, walked back through town and took some photos on the way back to the hotel. I got some good night photos of the new refurbished hôtel opposite the Opera House all lit up with coloured lights; the Opera House itself; a clock face and one of the pretty squares further down the road off the Place de la Comedie and Rue de la Porte Dijeaux.

Back in my regular wooden chair I ordered a bière and sat drifting off for a while, part of me watching the world go by the Doric columns opposite. I felt fine, but noted that I was feeling slightly lonely today, particularly as the Bordeaux group had cancelled on me. Good job that I had checked that situation out otherwise I would have been stood up big time and would have had no idea how to get in touch with anyone.

Coming out of my reverie, I wrote up a small description of what was happening around. Just notes – brief glimpses really. Rather than making them into a story I have copied them exactly as they were in my hand-written journal.

•        Woman talking on the telephone in a house window behind the columns.
•         Passing red umbrella casting reddish glow on a man’s face.
•        Other umbrellas stable and squashed.        
•    Cobbles outside running with water- reddish brown -small off-square shapes from years of wear.
•        Little river of water running down the street. Larger – foot square – flat tiles inside the Café Utopia .
•        Dribbles of rain from folded umbrellas being brought in.
•        Oily gathering of moisture on a black umbrella.
•       Woman sitting near me – her soft girlish eyelashes and an aquiline nose.
•       Young woman with summer hay blonde hair just cycled – almost glided past, a small spray of water coming from the back wheel.
•    Two attractive ladies in their thirties laugh on the doorstep and I caught the word ‘ironique’ in the air. A third umbrella joins them and the black-white one runs a single rivulet of rainwater to the ground.
•    One set of feet hidden by baggy trousers; the second bound black above the ankles and the third court shoes open backed and buckled at the front.
•    Brown seems very in this year.

This was my second Sunday in sunny Bordeaux and very sunny it was too. At 9.25am, when I left the hôtel that day in search of some Sunday fun there was a nice blue sky. During my stay so far I had spent some of my time reading about the city and the events that are regularly on as par for the course, like the Sunday market in the Chartrons area. But where?  Following my usual route through the modern business and Mercure hôtel block at the back of my hôtel I slowly walked up to the river bank after crossing two lanes of Sunday traffic. A big cruise ship was moored along the bank on my side of the river and slightly to the left was a super little market just starting up.

So, anyway, I had a lovely day doing nothing much except hanging around the market on the quays enjoying the sights and sounds and I enjoyed drinking two small glasses of Bordeaux blanc  and a yellowy Sauterne wine that tasted much sweeter. At the huitres and crevettes stalls I felt very adventurous asking for, and eating the crevettes. Although I couldn’t quite muster up the courage to go for the full six oysters as I had never had them before and I wasn’t sure how to eat them. It was great sitting in the sun mid-morning with the tourists and regular Bordeaux folk who had come to do their regular market shopping and I thought to myself that it simply isn’t the same going to an English market. Granted there was live music too and everyone seemed very relaxed ambling about the quays.

sea food stall

The wine that I mentioned before, was purchased from a small stand at the northern end of the market and one of the owners/workers got chatting to me and I would have so liked to have taken his photo because he was such a character. He had a small face, looked a bit like a human walnut and he had small blackened teeth and smiled a lot. This guy was pleasant enough and thought that I understood his French as long as I laughed in the correct places. He was courteous enough to say that he thought my French was good and the wine I was drinking was from bottles packed in big ice buckets from below the counter.

Bread stall

I spent ages just looking around the twenty or so stalls that were there and tried to take some atmospheric photos. My, the sun was hot that day and I had come out in my olive green tee shirt and no hat. I also didn’t put any sun cream on. Big mistake as we shall read later on.

About 11 o’clock I went for a short walk into town and got talking to some Americans and Canadians on the way from the ship. I almost became like a tour guide, and at some points I’m sure I said “And, ladies and gentlemen, on the left side of the rostral column is….” On my way through town I called in at the main tourist office and asked about trips out, the costs, the duration, and when I needed to book etc.

Later on I returned back to the market and stayed there quite a while enjoying the atmosphere. That evening, when I wrote up my notes, I tried to remember the types of stalls that I had witnessed. To the best of my memory there were:

Two fresh fish stalls, one with a seagull motive.

Two stalls with freshly picked legumes. Purple peppers and green beans.

One just of strawberries – a large trestle table of them.

One big bread stall – a big variety of bread styles and sizes of rustic loaves.

One hat stall

One brocantes

Two cheese stalls

One artisan cheeses – although I couldn’t work out what they were initially.

Two butchers – with fresh rabbit too

Two spin the cooked chicken stalls with golden roasting chickens.

One dried meats – smelt great

One fresh herbs in bunches.

One wine to try

One just bottles of wine from Bordeaux and Medoc.

One huitres and crevettes tastings between 10.30am and 2pm

Couple of live musicians and a lady singer.

Mad eccentric guitarists having fun

People cooking paella with squid and a cuttlefish dish that I had a sample of.

At some point later that day I drifted back to Café Utopia and discovered it to  be very busy and because the staff were run off their feet there was no-one to chat to today. I had a couple of small halves of bière as I was hot and then went back to the market.

I waited about five minutes and although it was very hot I decided to walk part way and go get a tram at the next stop. The tram wasn’t that busy and I got off at the terminal. A wine tour bus arrived at the same time and the notion of taking a tour out to a chateau suddenly got very appealing. Buzzing with this notion I walked down Rue Ste Catherine and gravitated once more to Café Utopia and once there asked for a grande bière. I discovered another word for big beer later in the holiday, much later in the holiday actually. Most of the time these beers I kept drinking were demis or halves. The lovely Charlotte served my grande bière to me.

I took my time with the beer and made some notes of things going on around me. Things about the staff; things about their clients and things about happenings in and around the cinema- bar.

A tall guy serving at the bar was humming ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’ and I was trying to remember the words for him. I didn’t get very far, I’m afraid. In my journal I wrote - maybe I’ll try again some other time. Then I wrote down some rough lyrics but they all seemed wrong. A couple of days later I checked them on the Internet and the lyrics there confirmed the fact that they were indeed, wildly out.

I made a note that I was enjoying looking at the pretty French women and another to indicate that my head had  ‘just clicked’ with the Roman columns outside in the square. It was weird because they are quite big on a plinth and yet only on this, my third visit to Bordeaux, had I made any connections with the history of the square and the remains being found 100 years ago. I had thoughts that I must photograph the tourist sign that made me aware of all these details and translate it. Sadly, I never did.

Observing events outside, I noticed a very skinny guy in his forties with no shirt on and he had a tatty blue jumper slung over his shoulder. He was having avid conversations with his thicker set friend, a man wearing a white tee shirt and sporting a goatee beard. The skinny guy was smoking and leaning forward constantly as he spoke. Three nearby girls had moved from their bench and had positioned themselves elsewhere away from these dodgy characters. As I looked closer I recognised that the skinny guy had half-mast purple/red coloured trousers. The two of them were now swapping plastic bags. I felt like I was writing a spy novel as I hurried to note down all these observations. OK, back to Skinny and Chunky. The skinny one was now looking sideways as if something was cracking off and had now put on his faded blue Le Coq jumper. They swapped plastic bags and Chunky puts his in a rucksack. Skinny is now drinking from a plastic bottle. It looks like cheap red wine.

His friend, Chunky, has sunglasses resting on the top of his head and was now doing up the rucksack. Performing an elaborate hand jive, the cartoon couple part before les flics arrived.

Now back in the city centre I made my way through the busy shopping streets to the Café Utopia where, as it was so hot outside I went in to my regular seat and ordered another ‘cheaper bière’ from Clement, the waiter. I had a well-deserved rest here for a while from walking so much. Although I must say that my feet were now quite hot in my double thickness walking socks.

To amuse myself, and to give myself some practice in writing and making interesting observations about people and places, I put pen to notebook and noted the following. ‘An old man and his wife are sitting outside in the sunshine and I can see them from my vantage point in the shade inside Café Utopia. I feel like a novelist.

Roman remains

‘He looks like a very grumpy Woody Allen and his wife resembles a strict bible basher. The woman is dressed in an orange hat and underneath her blue summer jacket she is wearing a blouse that matches her hat. She also has on a long blue dress and crinkled tights.’ I drew a funny little sketch of him and whilst in descriptive mode I described my bière. ‘My bière is a golden colour and there is red lettering with the brand METEOR and below the name is engraved a depiction of a little French village. My bière has a small frothy head and the bowl of the glass is cold, but the stem and base are still warm from a recent washing.’ I can see the Roman remains in the far distance across the busy square.

Further observations meant that I recognised patterns regarding people that regularly arrived to pick up a brochure from the red stand in the doorway of the cinema. More often than not they arrived on a bike. Another more interesting observation for me was that there were quite a lot of dark- haired, brown- eyed Latin looking girls and women: types I found very appealing. As all these fascinating observations were going on I was sitting there with a theme from the musical, Les Miserables, going through my head. Just popped in there from nowhere.

Remembering home; my Café Utopia picture as screensaver on my home computer was becoming quite predictive as I appeared to spending a lot of time hanging around Café Utopia on this visit already. My ongoing understanding of the French language was also becoming less of a garble for me and I was picking up bits as I went along. Also, Bordeaux is becoming ostensibly familiar and real, less of a French fantasy city as it was formerly for me four years ago on my first visit. Saying that it can still surprise me; like the sight of the pandas on Saturday. Oh, the smell of patuli oil just wafted in. At this stage I am sitting in my blue collarless shirt and my right hand is writing up the notes. Interestingly these notes are becoming part of the holiday as opposed to an adjunct. A crowd of people are just coming out of a film. Part of me still wants to see a film but the nice weather seems too good to waste. I was also having thoughts of going to Biarritz as I would like to see the sea and big waves.

In September of 2008 I went back to my favourite city for a two weeks holiday and wrote a 66 page journal about my adventures there and the trips out to Biarritz and Toulouse. It would be too much in terms of blogging to put the whole journal on this blog as blogs tend to be short by nature. What I am planning is to edit the original and blog with edited highlights and funny stories. Keep your eyes open for these tasty morsels of Bordeaux life and please feel free to comment. They should be arriving online in the next couple of days. Phil