A weekend in Bordeaux

Bordeaux is a perfect town for a weekend visit - not too big, not too small, with enough sightseeing and liveliness to keep one enjoying oneself and ending somewhat reinvigorated, just like other French cities of similar size. Lots of History, good food, lively cafés, cosmopolitanism and multiethnicity, and the French savoir vivre.

There is not one feature particularly outstanding (except maybe for the Cité du Vin), but there is enough of everything very good to make the ensemble a great city. I stayed in a little hotel in the centre, near the Cathédrale de Saint André and the Hôtel de Ville. The architecture of the city is mostly from the 18th century, with lots of little squares with cosy café terraces, Gothic churches built over Romanesque ones, all kinds of shops and restaurants. I particularly liked Basilique Saint Seurin, the oldest church in Bordeaux, with the Merovingian sarcophagi in the crypt.

Then strolling along the bank of the Garonne, after passing the monument to the Girondins and down the Place des Quinconces (the biggest Place in Europe), by the Pont de Pierre (that I unconsciously named the Pont de Saint Pierre until noticing my mistake reading the city map), and the stately Place de la Bourse with the famous Miroir d'Eau.

Rue Sainte Catherine s apparently the longest pedestrianized shopping street in Europe, it was so crowded I thought at first there was a demonstration - there are always demonstrations in France - but as I got nearer I saw it was only shoppers and other people strolling by. From there I went to the Saint Michel area, with another big church and a lot of ethnic shops, like North African bazaars and halal butchers, but lively and multiethnic, not at all like a ghetto -the kind of European multiethnicity I so much enjoy.

The Musée d'Aquitaine was very interesting, with a good collection; I loved the Roman exhibition with the faces in the funerary stella, that always make me wonder about the real people behind them, and the Medieval Romanesque sculptures, so beautiful and imaginative. There was also the funeral monument of Montaigne, one of the men I most admire as a writer and a personality. Also lots of information about the slave trade and a good collection of art from Africa and Oceania.

I walked along the Garonne bank tothe Cité du Vin, an excellent modern museum, very technological and very informative about everything you want to know about wine, whose visit ends with the tasting of a glass of wine - I had a Médoc quite good.

There is good food everywhere, as usual in France; the local pastry cannelé is nice, somehow between the Neapolitan baba and the Breton kuin amman, and I ate a great galette du sarrasin at a Breton restaurant. I spent the last morning in a wonderful bookstore, Mollat, buying a few books - and exercising restraint, otherwise I would be ruined and carrying too much weight on the plane.

So, it was a very nice weekend and I look forward to travelling again.