Bordeaux

Hello everyone!

Well the course is ended, I am no longer a student in France, but a tourist again.

I am also in Bordeaux, a beautiful city in the South of France. This is actually the first city I visited in France when I was here last time and it has been an absolute pleasure to be here again with Leslie (my French friend from Wollongong) and Ben and Lisa two other students from UOW.

Because I have to be up at 6am tomorrow morning to make the trek to Rouen in the North of France (for those of you who have been enjoying the Game of Thrones references, this is a journey roughly approximate to the distance between King's Landing and Winterfell), this blog post will be rather photo intensive...

Bordeaux is a city with a rather interesting history. Close to the sea, it has been an influential trading port and wine growing are for centuries.

It is the capital of Aquitaine which was part of England from the mid 12th Century when Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II Plantagenet until the middle of the 15th century.

In the 19th century, what we in the Anglophone world call the Victorian Era, and what the French call the Belle Epoque, the city of Bordeaux flourished from trade and heaps of new buildings sprung up. I like to think of it as the Perth of 19th Century France. These beautiful buildings now line the waterfront at Bordeaux creating a very impressive skyline.

 

Here is my arty-farty picture of the bell tower which marks the entry to the medieval quatier. 

 

Bordeaux has an absolute abundance of delicious and cheap meals. We didn't eat here, but how cute is it!?

 

These two pictures are of the Bourse, or treasury. They are right on the river. 

 

The Hotel de Ville. 

 

My attempt to capture how pretty the water front looks at sunset....

 

I feel that my attempts to capture the deliciousness of the food were more successful!

 

Chocolate fish!

 

These are canele, a traditional Bordelaise food. They are chewy on the outside and soft and vanilla-ey on the inside. Truly awesome. 

 

This is me in Stalingrad......the tram stop, that is....

 

And here is the blue lion of Bordeaux....which is, to be honest, rather small when you compare it to the Australian tradition of big bananas, big oysters, Marinos and potatoes!

This Saturday was of course the 14th July or Bastille Day (Fete Nationale if you're French). There was a beautiful firework display that we watched by the river, along with what must have been every other person in Bordeaux. 

Here are some pictures of the city by night....

 

 

I love that there is accidentally a hipster in this photo....

The night had a rather dramatic end. After Leslie and I walked Ben and Lisa back to the hotel (about an hour and a half) we realised there were no more trams. Leslie decided that she wanted to take a bike from the bike rental system. I then realised I haven't ridden a bike since I was about 12... and this ride was going to involve bumpy cobble stones and dodging the drunken partiers at 2am. 

We ran into some Australians, (not literally) thank gosh, and ended up making it home in one piece but with a significantly higher heart rate, and not just from the exercise!

 

Love from France!!!