Pardon My French, Chapter 6: Battle of Bordeaux

Ok, so we didn't actually get into a battle in Bordeaux, unless you count the traffic, but that was certainly bad enough. It was just about as bad as London. It seems the entire country of France is under construction, and most of it is on the streets of Bordeaux. Add to that a demonstration in front of the courthouse, the usual working day traffic, and French directional signs that leave a great deal to be desired, and you've got an interesting time on your hands. Thank goodness Jimbo was doing the driving, so he was doing all the cussing while Mick and I had a merry old time.

I don't think either Jimbo or I were entirely impressed with Bordeaux. It was noisy, dirty, crowded, and entirely unlike any of the other beautiful cities, towns and villages we'd seen on our trip.

There is an impressive cathedral. So we snapped a picture of that, though we didn't go inside.

We also found an amazing history museum. That was quite possibly the best part of the day in Bordeaux. The museum took us from the earliest record of humans in the area (including samples of bits of jawbone, simple rock tools, and the remains of a campfire), through Roman times and into the modern era. It was facinating and the boys enjoyed it as much as I did. Once again the signs were all in French, but they had these nice little phone things that had an English narrative to go along with the exhibits.

We lunched at the cutest little cafe/boulangerie ever. There were old tea kettles and tricycles and things hanging from the ceiling, checkered table cloths on the tables, and lovely china teapots for serving tea and coffee. Water was served in old wine bottles. We ordered Croque Monsieur sandwiches, which is basically a grilled ham and cheese. Except fancy. And French. And these were SUPER yum! Dripping with hot, melted guyere and bleu cheese on homemade wholegrain brain. Oh, joy! Honestly, that was one of the best meals we had the whole trip. Naturally I followed it up by buying some delightful macroons for snacking on later.

After a wander through town and a mooch about the shops, we stopped for coffee in the Turkish district. Mick treated us to dark, smooth, black French coffee and some sort of Turkish treat that involved almonds, syrup and... couscous? I have no idea what it was, but it was good! He said he used to have it in Turkey when he was there.

After a long day of hard work wandering and enjoying ourselves, we headed home for a long deserved rest. Just one more day left of sight seeing...