We are huge wine lovers and just had to visit of the best wine regions in the world if we are in France. That got us here but there was a ton of other things to do and Bordeaux is a beautiful city. Fantastic architecture, long pedestrian streets, and some interesting museums to see. The streets feel like a “mini Paris” but we were told that Bordeaux was mostly built first so they like to call Paris a “big Bordeaux”. We took a city walking tour that gave us a start on the history of this wine city as well as an overview of what we wanted to do this week. While the information was great, it started raining really hard and our focus was on staying dry instead of seeing the sites right away. Also, the city had a lot of fences up and the trams weren’t running normally because King Charles was visiting for a few hours. We didn’t end up seeing the king…. which wasn’t that big of a disappointment.
The next 2 days we decided pay for a 48 hour city pass which gave us admission to several museums and attractions. We started with the city of wine museum in this fancy modern looking building.
There were a lot of high tech exhibits that explained making wine, varieties, history of wine and the history of wine in Bordeaux. We really like the exhibits that let you smell the different smells you can find in wine. We are wine lovers so we had to see everything and it took us several hours.
The next stop with our city pass was the Dali and Gaudi multimedia exhibit. These art video projection exhibits have been popping up in a lot of cities all over the world, including Seattle, and we have been avoiding them It feels like it is looking at art for people who are used to seeing everything with technology and need to have it “exciting”. But this one was in a World War II cement bunker that the Nazi’s parked their submarines so we decided to give it a go. They showed Salvador Dali paintings moving across the water inside of the old submarine houses while they blasted Pink Floyd. It was really fun and I think I need to stop being closeminded to different ways to see art. It isn’t really looking at a painting the way the artist intended, but I think Dali would really have like his art set to Pink Floyd reflected in the water.
After this we saw that there was a distillery tour nearby that was also covered by our city pass. Unfortunately the tour was entirely in French so we spent and hour and a half only understanding a word once in a while. Luckily they didn’t ask us any questions, so weren’t outed as non French speakers. The distillery was a little interesting in that they took the old cement fuel tank for the submarines and turned it into their barrel aging room. I’m sure this is the only distillery in the world aging their whiskey in a Nazi fuel tank. As soon as we got our free tastings at the end, we left before they could find out that we were the idiots that pretended listen to his talk for an hour and a half.
The next day, we continued with our city pass and visited art museums and a Bordeaux history museum. We like museums, but we have seen so many and we were worn out after this and needed a break from being tourists. We are really like our current plan of staying a week in an area that really only has 3 days of tourist attractions.
After a rest day of just wandering around the city, we chose to go visit Saint Emilion and see if we could taste some wine in some Chateau Estates. Saint Emilion is a beautiful small wine tourist town with historic churches, filled with wine shops, and surrounded by Winery Chateaus. We have been to SOOO MANY tasting rooms all over the world but we are still trying to find the best way to do multiple tastings in Europe. We have been to other wine regions in France, Spain and Italy and haven’t found the American style tasting rooms where you can just stop in and pay a small fee to taste 5 or 6 wines. If they are open to the public, you need to have a reservation. They often advertise wine tours that will take you to 2-3 wine estates for tours and tastings but those are not in our budget range. In Saint Emilion we were able to find a winery that was just what we wanted. We walked into an open cave cellar and wandered by ourselves around some aging barrels in a dark moldy cave. At the end we found the French winemaker that offered to give us some wine tastings for a small fee. This is what we wanted- an old French guy that barely spoke English, that could answer our many questions about Bordeaux wine. He was awesome! We enjoyed our tastings and bought some wine to drink with our dinner that night. Saint Emilion was also filled with a lot of wine shops- some tied to one winery, and some that sold wine from many wineries. Most of these will let you taste for free but the expectation is that you are going to buy some wine. Very intimidating for English speakers that don’t really understand the etiquette. But we wandered into one where the hostess spoke English and offered some free tastings for us. She was very helpful and not intimidating at all. We told here our price range and what we were looking for and she gave us several to taste. Again, we were happy and bought some more wine for dinner.
Our Airbnb in Bordeaux was a beautifully restored apartment, right on a tram stop with another very friendly responsive host. It was a bit expensive but Bordeaux is a little pricy overall. Airbnb link
We enjoyed Bordeaux a lot and could see ourselves returning some day. Maybe staying in one of the small wine towns like Saint Emilion. Next stop- the beach!!! Saint-Jean-De-Luz in French Basque country.
