Bordeaux Day 3

For our last day of vacation we did a food tour of the old part of Bordeaux. It also included a walking tour. We met our guide Clemence at the fountain in the Place de la Bource , a large place with buildings around it that were formerly used for the wine trade. This was another small tour group which was great. There were only 5 of us including our tour guide. The couple who joined us were headed out on our Azamara ship. They are headed up along the French coast and on to Amsterdam.

After a brief walking tour though some of the streets in Bordeaux we stopped at a small wine shop that deals primarily with organic wines. We sampled 3 different Bordeaux wines at the shop as we learned about the different ways being used to keep chemicals out of wine and the challenges it possesses. The wines were excellent. Afterwards we learned that the cost of the 3 wines ranged from 7-20 Euro. The owner and our guide Clemence were both extremely knowledgeable about the wines in Bordeaux. We found that with most of our tours, the guides were both knowledgeable and excited to share the that knowledge. We felt like we learned a lot about the people and the culture. These tours were well worth the time and cost.

We learned a lot about the history of Bordeaux including how as the wine trade expanded, the once small town needed to be rebuilt in the 17th century from wooden structures to stone. This partly address sanitation and partly address the danger of fires. There were large stone gates built to control entrance to the city. Many of the gates remain but the structures around them were torn down. We walked around the cathedral which was not open but we did get to go into a coffee shop that was once a church and part of the original church is maintained inside the shop. Another nearby old church has been repurposed into a hotel. We also learned about the significant role that Bordeaux sadly played in the slave trade. Reminders of that role can be seen in some of the carved faces on buildings.

After our walking tour we stopped in a small restaurant for lunch. Unlike many of the other food tours we’ve done, with samples at multiple stops, this one was a main course where we spent almost an hour enjoying the food and a glass of wine. We had 2 choices for lunch, a chicken dish with vegetables and a raw white fish dish covered with strips of raw vegetables in a cream sauce. Both were good but I don’t think anyone caught the description that the fish was raw. It was nice to have a little time to enjoy each other’s company.

Following our lunch we made 3 stops for desset. Each was unique and really well chosen because of the freshness of the things we tried. The first was a shop that just made bite size cream puffs with an incredible filling called Dunes Blanch. They come from the Arcaheon area we visited yesterday.

Our second stop was at a chocolate shop that makes specialty chocolates. The owner works with small cocoa plantations around the world and has won international awards for her chocolates. We purchased 2 small boxes of chocolates with a Bordeaux wine infused filling, one box from left bank and another from the right bank.

Our last stop was for canelés, one of my favorite desserts. They are small cakes that look like bundt cakes with an egg textured cake infused with rum baked in a copper tin. The outside has a crust of sugar. These were made fresh and were delicious. I was enjoying them so much I forgot to take a photo.

We said good-bye to our tour guide Clemence and our 2 tour companions, Elaine and Tom. We wished them well on the cruise and hope they have as wonderful a cruise as we did.

We had one final dinner planned for the evening so we headed back to our hotel to rest a bit before heading out for dinner. Our hotel was so conveniently located to everything so we were able to walk everywhere,

For dinner we ate at a lovely restaurant called Le 1455. It is located in one of the buildings near today’s tour meeting place and coincidentally is in the same space as the restaurant we ate at the last time we were in Bordeaux more than ten years ago. We started the meal with an apéritif. I ordered a Bordeaux gin with a jasmine/mint mixer. David ordered a Carolina which was a margarita with a Carolina Reaper pepper floating in it. He needed to take the pepper out after about 10 minutes. The meal was creative and exceptional as was the service. All of the food is sourced from a farm owned by the restaurant owner. It was a great way to end our trip.