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.
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| Monument to the Girondins in the distance, National Opera to the right |
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| Another angle of the National Opera |
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| Place de la Bourse |
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| Cathédrale Saint-André |
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| Rue Condillac |
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| Edd vs Food #172 Shredded duck & feta on dauphinoise potatoes At Samos Greek Food, 2 Pl. du Séminaire, Bordeaux |
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| 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. |
