Bordeaux, France

Bordeaux is the world capital of wine. According to the French. If they do say so themselves. I'm not a wine expert, but I enjoyed my trundles through both the Yarra and Napa valleys in 2013 and 2015 respectively, and I wonder if perhaps the French are getting a bit complacent on this point. Arguably they've been so for half a century now. For 'twas in 1976 that a group of French wine judges, to their own subsequent mortification, accidentally blind-tasted California wines into the global top spot. That event is known today as the Judgement of Paris, a witty pun on the Trojan wars (as in Orlando Bloom playing Paris in the film "Troy").

There is a bit of dispute about the origins of the name 'Bordeaux'. Some will tell you that it derives from the French au bord de l'eau, ie "by the water". Others think it comes from the original Latin name given by the Romans: Burdigala. I'm inclined to side with the latter, if only because the former would have been spectacularly unoriginal. All of these French cities sit on rivers. Actually, in recent days, it's been more a case of rivers sitting on cities. There has been record rainfall and riverbanks are being burst everywhere. 

One consequence of which was my train here being cancelled, and then my replacement train being delayed, giving me an unexpected aggregate wait of roughly 8 hours in Toulouse. First world problems, of course. It just meant a very long lunch and then a few slow beers in dodgy French dive bars. Even the dodgiest and diviest of dodgy French dive bars still feels safer and more bohemian than their equivalents back in the UK. Perhaps this is partly because beer is so ruinously expensive in France - €3.50 for 250ml (not even half a pint) of generic fizzy bathwater - that the average nutter simply can't afford it.

As well as transport disruption, Storm Nils and Storm Pedro have caused widespread damage across France and Spain. But worst of all, this kind of weather makes for very dull photos, as you'll see below. There hasn't been even a peek of blue sky during my whole time in Bordeaux. A separate issue is that I always leave my camera flash turned off, out of consideration for others, and so my evening dinner photos are never as good as my daytime lunch photos, as you'll also see below.

Not that I'm eating out twice a day every day. Even if I could afford it, my long-suffering guts wouldn't tolerate that amount of rich, fatty, creamy, buttery food. Most of my diet is home cooking. I'm now out of illicitly smuggled post-Brexit Bisto, but thankfully I've gained sufficient familiarity with the powdered sauce offerings of French supermarkets that I can manage without it. I hope you're all as proud of me as I am of myself. 

Monument to the Girondins in the distance, National Opera to the right

Another angle of the National Opera

Place de la Bourse

Cathédrale Saint-André

Rue Condillac

Edd vs Food #172
Shredded duck & feta on dauphinoise potatoes
At Samos Greek Food, 2 Pl. du Séminaire, Bordeaux

Edd vs Food #173
€35 for a 3-course set menu, which is about as pricey as I'm ever likely to go.
Onion soup, pork knuckle, and raspberry tart.
Poor photography from me, but first-rate food from...
Clochette et Fourchette, 7 Rue des Faures, Bordeaux.

Toulouse, France

On my very first trip back in 2008, I carried a naff second-hand backpack that went in the bin as soon as I got home. I then bought a new Berghaus backpack in 2011, and that's what I've travelled with ever since. It's a bit worn, but everything still works. Even now that I'm way too old for youth hostels, I still cling to the idea that I'm a backpacker rather than a tourist. I feel that buying a wheeled suitcase would be a kind of surrender to old age, an acceptance that I'm essentially giving up on life, rather like getting married or taking up golf.

My backpack isn't huge but it's too big for airline cabins so it always goes in the hold. I have a much smaller secondary backpack for the cabin. It's a soft bag, which means it never gets pulled over for weighing or measuring; it just goes under the seat in front. Both my bags generally weigh under 10kg so weight restrictions are never a problem. 

I used to take a slightly masochistic pleasure in walking long distances with one bag over each shoulder, and of course it's always nice to stretch one's legs after a long flight. But nowadays - with my 50th birthday coming at me like one of these high-speed French SNCF trains - that kind of thing does more harm than good, especially where my back is concerned.

Toulouse is probably my favourite French city so far. There's nothing particularly spectacular to see here. It's just a very nice place and I like strolling around it. I've been here a full week and you'd think that would have been long enough for me to think of something interesting to write in my blog. As you see above, it wasn't. I'll try harder next time.

Place du Capitole

Le Capitole itself

Rue de Metz

Along the banks of the Garonne

Basilique Notre-Dame de la Daurade

Basilique Saint-Sernin

Pont Neuf
('new bridge', though it is in fact nearly 400 years old) 

Edd vs Food #170
A croque monsieur for the ages at Mam Street Food, 11 Ave de la Gloire, Toulouse

Edd vs Food #171
Vietnamese-themed set menu at Zig Zag, 9 Pl. du Pont Neuf, Toulouse
L: Rouleau de printemps (spring roll) containing chicken & veg
R: Beef & onions with pilau rice
I don't think Vietnamese curry sauces are normally laced with red wine, but I'm not complaining.

Narbonne/Perpignan, France

"Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French."

― P.G. Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins

I'm far from Cannes, and even further from being young, but basically the above still applies. Learning French at school and via Duolingo, and then going to France and trying it out? Well, that's a bit like learning English from 'Downton Abbey' and Bond films, and then rocking up in Glasgow. It's a journey, and one with a very long way to go yet.

One thing that helps is the huge number of words that are spelled the same in both French and English. You just have to tweak the pronunciation a bit. Not only words where you can clearly see and hear the French influence (debris, omelette, reservoir, genre, ballet) but also some others that aren't quite so obvious (rectangle, apostrophe, occasion, parachute, machine).

Admittedly there are still a few foodstuffs on restaurant menus that I don't recognise. But in fairness the same applies back home. I was into my late twenties before I learned what a shallot was. Here they call it an échalote. 

People who are genuinely bilingual have a kind of unconscious 'switch' in their brains that lets them move between languages instantaneously. My own 'switch' is more like a big rusty lever that I've spent years laboriously hammering into place. Now I'm trying to make the lever go three ways, and at times the lever crumbles and my brain just shuts down altogether. It almost makes me miss the days of travelling in South-East Asia and happily using amateur sign language for 'chicken' (flappy side-arms) or 'beef' (finger-horns above head).

That said, I think I'm still doing better than most of the other foreigners here. In McDonalds I saw an Eastern European family clutching ticket number 97 and they were left utterly perplexed when the store manager yelled out "Quatre! Vingts! Dix! Sept!" ('four twenties ten seven', that's how they say 'ninety-seven' in French.)

Anyway I don't have much to report from Narbonne, or from my day trip on the train to Perpignan. Hence the waffle above, and the double dose of Edd vs Food below. Til next time.

Palais-Musée des Archevêques, Narbonne

Outside my front door in Narbonne

Weird statue of Salvador Dali in Perpignan.
He once proclaimed Perpignan train station to be 'the centre of the universe'.
If you look at his Wikipedia entry, whatever you do, don't scroll down to the part subtitled 'Sexuality'.

Looking west over Perpignan from the Palace of the Kings of Majorca.
The mountain in the distance is Cañigo (9,134ft), about 30 miles away as the crow flies.

Perpignan again

Edd vs Food #168
Set menu at Au GousTous in Perpignan
Paté for starters, pork cheek with mashed potato for main course.
('Mashed potato' sounds much less sophisticated than écrasé de pommes de terre.)

Edd vs Food #169
Taco/fries/drink combo at Enjoy Tacos. Kind of like the French version of Taco Bell.
Special offer: 10 free chicken nuggets!
Felt a bit sick afterwards TBH.