My new favorite city

This weekend we packed up the dogs and drove over to Bordeaux.  It's a 3 1/2 hour drive from our house, through rolling hills and vineyards.  Bruce has an old schoolmate who has lived over there for about 10 years and he hasn't seen him in 25 years!   We left Friday morning and came back Saturday night.

We didn't have anyone to watch the chickens or the cat, so being gone for 2 full days was all we could do.  The poor chickens were shut in their coop for 2 days and Maillot had to live outside for a night (in fact 2 nights because she ran out the door at 10:00 pm the night before and didn't come back until we woke up at 7am the next morning).  We stayed at the Hotel Majestic (and they take dogs), it was a wonderful hotel and I recommend it to anyone visiting Bordeaux.  

We had a mix of rain and sun but it wasn't too bad, because the city is just lovely.  It's in fact my new favorite city.  I had hoped to meet Perigrinations but timing wasn't good as she was heading out of town right when we arrived.  So next time, hopefully.

I am very quick to judge and the minute I saw Bordeaux I knew that I loved it.  The architecture reminds me of Paris.  The city is clean thanks to a new Marie, many of the building are being cleaned up.  Seems that they are limestone and soak up all pollution and most of the buildings were black, now they are beautiful and clean.  Sure makes a big difference.

We met Bruce's friend B at our hotel and headed out to lunch.  B is married to N and he has 2 sons from a previous marriage.  It was great to finally meet him.  We had a lovely lunch and then headed back to the hotel to walk the dogs and relax a bit.

We then met up with B and his wife and kids for steak.  We don't each much red meat here, don't find it very good, but this restaurant had amazing steak and we had a great time.

On Saturday we woke up early and took a 3 hour walk around the city with the dogs.  It rained some and all of us were a bit wet, but we had fun anyway.  When it rains it's a good excuse to stop and have a café.

We walked all through the Jardin Public which was so beautiful.

After walking around the city for 3 hours we decided to grab a quick lunch and then had back to the hotel.  Check-out was 11 but they let us keep the car in the garage until 12:30.  We decided to take a drive east to St. Emilion, one of the famous bordeaux growing regions in France.  

The wine here is much more expensive than the wines of the Midi-Pyrenees (of course...it's bordeaux).  So we couldn't buy 12 bottles like we did in Gaillac, we ended up buying 6 and it cost more than the 12!  We'll crack these open when our guests arrive in a couple weeks and in July.   

I can't wait to go back to Bordeaux.  We'd like to take our "village" bikes and ride around as they have bike paths everywhere.  It's a lovely city and I highly recommend you visiting it if you can.  We had a great time.