2 posts tagged “cafe”
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.
An exert from a larger journal about a great holiday in Bordeaux. Cafe Utopia is a cinema featured in previous blogs and has a nice cheap little cafe in the front part of the old church building.
After quite a while milling around town I went to seek out the miroir d’eau, a purpose built area in front of the customs houses that throws up jets of water and steam during the day and evening and gives interesting photographic opportunities and chances for the locals and visitors alike to engage with the ‘art’. I couldn’t find it to start with and made my way through the back streets to my regular haunt, the Café Utopia.
The back streets around here became a common route for me to traverse and I thought it might be pertinent to name a few of the streets and the local church to which they are all connected .So, in no particular order; Rue de la devise, rue du Mulet, rue du Cancéra, square Vinet, rue des Bahutiers, Eglise St Pierre (church), rue de la Vache, rue Fernand Philipart, Place St Pierre. Et Voila!
A continuum occurred through the holiday in the passing of the aforementioned church and streets and that was the sighting of household articles such as chairs and tables and a couch dumped alongside the regular rubbish bins to be taken away by the bin men. This habit wouldn’t occur in the UK as such large objects have to be disposed of at proper sites, not just left in the street.
There was also a great smelling small bakery in the same collection of streets and I often caught sight of people carrying around large wooden veg boxes and I got a great still of one old lady doing just that with four of these boxes in her hands at once. As a foreigner here I must have had a differing perspective on day-to-day life than that of someone who lived and worked in Bordeaux.
Back at Café Utopia situated at 5, place Camille Jullian I saw really that nothing had changed from previous visits so I picked up their current magazine, La Gazette Utopia Cinémas, and settled in for some early lunch. The films on at the time, that I showed an interest in, were: Le silence de Lorna, Be Happy, Mike Leigh’s Happy Go Lucky, La Belle Personne par Christophe Honoré, Back Soon, Joyeuses Funérailles, Bons Baisers de Bruges or In Bruges, Café de Los Maestros.
A film called Entre les murs was getting a lot of promotion as well as the latest Woody Allen film, Vicky Christina Barcelona. His latest piece was being hailed as “une petite merveille.” Another Cannes awards winning film, L’homme de Londres, by Béla Tarr looked a most intriguing offering de film noir. Unfortunately for me it was on the week after I was to leave Bordeaux.
Whilst I browsed I ordered a half pint Meteor bière and took some photos. For old times sake I ordered the Assiette Mykanos. Assiette seems to mean – selection- so this was a selection of lettuce, conserved ginger, pan-fried chicken, prunes, tomatoes, bread, chicory, coleslaw and red cabbage. Plus bottled water and a scratched glass to drink it from; all good value for 14.10€.
Sitting eating, I thought that it was not the same kind of excitement of being back, as the last time, but pleasant all the same. I wrote that I felt like mothers with kids buggies were circling me after eating and paying for my food. I was sitting digesting my food on an old wooden church pew writing up some notes to keep myself fresh with what was happening daily. From a journal point of view, it is so easy to leave off the writing for a day or a few days and lots of events get forgotten, even amusing or interesting ones. I noted that there was a big poster for Le silence de Lorna hanging in front of me. Smells of bread baking and pastries cooking from that nearby bakery smelt good as they drifted in. Actually, they smelt great!
