Bordeaux - Tuesday October 29th

Kind of a low pressure day today.  We signed up for a two hour wine tasting in Bordeaux itself.  This was different than our experience yesterday in a couple of ways.  First, there were just 3 couples and an instructor sitting at a table. Next, we learned more about the various appellations in Bordeaux including the varieties of grapes.   We also discussed the four main wine regions of France, the grapes they use and differences in their wines.  We covered again the method of tasting a wine, but did not get into identifying scents or wine 'notes'.  The next part was very interesting.  The wines of Bordeaux are blended from two major grape varieties - Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.  The various appellations or sub-areas of the Bordeaux region blend their wines in different ways.  So our first task was to experience the differences in a Merlot wine compared to a Cabernet Sauvignon wind.  Then we created two differently blended wines.  Now four wines could be compared.  We all felt that the blended wines tasted better than either of the non-blended wines.  The next step of the class was a blind tasting of four wines representing the four major wine regions of France.  Our task was to figure out which wine came from which region.  This was quite difficult but fun.

After the tasting we went shopping and then had a late afternoon lunch/dinner.

I took some photos of the downtown while we were walking about.

The two images above are from a substantial monument to the Revolution.

The image above was taken beside the river looking across a reflecting pool to a couple of main downtown buildings.  The reflecting pool, in my view, integrates physically into the city the importance of the river in the history of this city.

A view across a park on the river.

This is the inside of the cathedral.  I have significantly increased the amount of light in this image - there were practically no lights on inside the building - it was very dark inside.

Tomorrow we leave to drive north to Tours, half way to Paris.  Maybe a little wine tasting at a Chateau before we leave Bordeaux.

Bordeaux - Monday October 28th

Today was a rainy day in Bordeaux.  But this didn't matter at all.  The downtown part of the City is quite wonderful - restored, clean, tree-lined, vibrant and full of people.  The central area has a main pedestrian street lined with restaurants and premier retailers.  

Above, a store with a creative retail message.

This is an electric street car, or, if you wish a surface subway train.  Very cool and very quiet.

The main cathedral.  It was closed today so hopefully I will have interior images tomorrow.

Our hotel on a very narrow street on the edge of the upscale retail area of downtown.  The car could not be parked at the hotel, and is parked in an underground structure about a five minute walk away.

When in Bordeaux, do what everyone seems to be doing - investigate wine.  We signed up for an afternoon tour of two wineries that included tastings.  This was great.  The tour company provided a minibus, a guide/driver, and some unique add-on features.

The grapes in the field of the first winery.  The grapes were harvested at the beginning of the month, about 2 weeks late.  This was not a good harvest as the spring and summer were very wet.  Production is down perhaps 40%.  Bordeaux is one of France's premier wine regions, both for quality and quantity of production.  About 7% of the production is premium product - what the wine experts go crazy over.

These are the large tanks where fermentation occurs.

Above, wine aging in oak barrels.  Only the best wines in the best vineyards are aged in oak.  The rest are aged in tanks - steel or lined concrete.

Part of the tour included the wine tasting.  A special feature of this event was the use of wine scents.  The sheet of paper with the colourful circles is a scent wheel describing the basic scents found in wine.  The two little bottles to the right of the scent wheel contain blind scents that we were asked to identify on the wheel.  This is quite difficult.  But the scents we were identifying were part of the structure of the two wines we tasted.

These were the wines we tasted. The wine on the left is their second tier wine, and the one on the right is there best wine.

This is the second winery.

Above is an image of concrete tanks used for aging.  Concrete and wood tanks are both used.  The benefit of the concrete is a better use of space.

This is a new tank that has a window down the side.  If you look carefully, you can see a dark zone at the bottom of the tank, and a lighter zone in the middle and top that appears to have a texture.  The lower zone is liquid wine juice.  The middle and top zone is the skins and seeds from the grapes themselves.  In this winery, the grapes are sorted for quality, de-stemmed, and the intact grapes are put into the tank.  As the fermentation process begins, the skins break and the juice separates.  Once or twice a day the liquid in the bottom is pumped up and over the material at the top.

Quite a complex process.

This is their underground aging room.  Very beautiful - built only a couple of years ago of precast concrete.

The wine we tasted.  Quite nice.

These people rarely ship to Canada due to very high taxes and high shipping costs.  Only the wealthy seem to bring it in at perhaps $200 a bottle.  Otherwise, do the best you can at the LCBO.

Capestang to Bordeaux - Sunday October 27th

The image above is inside the Catholic Church in Capestang - the one that was to be a Cathedral but was never finished.   It is quite nice inside.  A little odd in that it is so tall but so short in length.  Very nice stained windows.  A number of the alcoves we painted in beautiful designs.  Age has faded and deteriorated them quite extensively.

Above is a beautiful home in downtown Capestang.

A family in the central square of Capestang doing their thing.

Elaine and Cathy from the balcony of Elaine's rented flat or apartment.

The main living area of Elaines flat.

This is the terrace at the back of Elaine's flat.

A tree lined road on the way out of Capestang.  These trees grow quite large and line a number of roads and canals.

Downtown Bordeaux in the night.  They have a large, upscale pedestrian road lined with high end retail.  This is quite impressive.

More downtown.

Driving in France

It's easy to drive in France.  Sure. The French drive on the right and they have cars that work like ours, even if the car names are a bit strange.  You rent the car, they throw you the keys, and off you go.  Then the education begins - narrow roads, traffic circles, strange signs that mean nothing to a North American, weird rules to the road, huge difficulty in finding road signs, and to top it off, amazingly aggressive drivers.  On this last point, we have seen people do things that I have never seen back home.  So, easy to drive in France, yes.  But it's even easier to get into an accident or to get lost.  My personal opinion is that no North American should be given keys to a car without reviewing a booklet of road signage and driving rules and customs.  Here's some observations and thoughts:

1. Get a GPS.  We rented one with the car.  It may not be perfect, but it easy to use and the display is very readable.  It provides a huge confidence booster when, at speed, you're trying to figure out which road to take in an urban area.
2. Cars can not turn right on a red light.
3. A car entering from a road on the right MAY have the right of way even if you are on a bigger road and have no signage to say you don't have the right of way.  This is incredible and seems to make no sense.  I looked on the internet to figure this out, and the stated feeling is that no one could figure out why this rule exists, and why signage can be absent where this occurs.  In many locations there is signage, but not all locations.  Once you understand how this condition is covered in signage you have half the battle won.  It is where this condition exists in the absence of signage that it is very dangerous.
4. Driving too slowly will encourage some around you to drive extremely aggressively.
5. Slower traffic stays to the right.  The French practice this well and are very unhappy with slow cars in the left lane.
6. The French definition of a reasonable gap between moving cars is about a quarter of that in the GTA.  To their credit, they seem very skilled at moving in tight spaces at speed.  Kind of what you would see on a race track.
7. Roundabouts work really well as long as you enter with confidence and are not too slow.
8. Roundabouts are everywhere and in curious sizes and designs.
9. There is no grid system of streets in most places with the exception of large cities.
10. The super highway system works very well.  However, they are all tolled.  Our trip from Capestang to Bordeaux cost approximately 30 Euros for around 400 km.
11. Why talk to someone when you can use a horn!  And what the heck, use it again.  Why not again. Ok, never stop.
12. Fill the gas tank with the right type of gas!!!
13. They have micro, no nano, gas stations.  I can't believe how small they can be.
14. Be good with a standard drive car, starting from a stop, on a near vertical incline, with a car 2 inches from your rear bumper.  If you may not be good with this one, forget driving - take the train - way less stress.

So far, the driving experience has been ok, but interesting.  The best idea of all for successful driving, have a copilot to help navigate.

Marseille to Capestang - Saturday October 26th 2013

This is the motel we stayed at in Marseille.  It is modern, but small.  All the windows have a metal security screens that roll up or down by a wall switch. Between the metal slats are small ventilation holes.  One issue was that the temperature of the room was too high and could not be lowered.  It didn't make sense why it was so high as the outside temperature was nice and cool.  When we asked at the desk what they could do about this, the answer was nothing except open the window - the cooling system had already been switched over for heating for the winter.  The room never did cool down sufficiently.

We chose to take the scenic route back to Capestang.  This took us through the Camargue and across one river that required a ferry ride.

The Camargue is famous for pink flamingos.  This was our first and only siting of the pink birds.  The birds were at quite a distance and that is why the image is not crisp.  The flamingo's get their colour from the shrimp they eat, or so we were told.

Above, the restaurant in which we had lunch.  It was in the City of Sete on the Mediterranean Sea.

Above and below is the main canal through the City.

From Sete we drove back to Capestang.  Elaine took us out to a fabulous dinner at a local restaurant specializing in pizza.  I was able to get a dark beer, Pelworth Brun.  Inspite of the english sounding first name, it is brewed in France.

The dinner was wonderful and very gracious of Elaine to treat us.  In the morning we will be off to Bordeaux and will say good-bye to Elaine, and thanks for the incredible hospitality.  We start the second leg of our trip ending in Paris at the end of the week.

Marseille - Friday October 25th

We drove from our motel to downtown Marseille.  This is where the famous old port is located.  The old port is a wonderful, large basin surrounded by a wide plaza lined with residential apartment buildings.  The basin opens to the Mediterranean Sea and is protected on each side by a fort.  Apparently Marseille had a reputation of being unruly.  During the Napoleonic period, the guns on the forts faced the city!

We hopped onto a open topped tour bus for a road tour of the major sites in the downtown.  The weather was perfect - sunny, breezy, and just a tad cool.  The sky was amazing - bright and a deeper shade of blue.  It reminded me of southern Florida on the ocean.  There were lots of people milling about seeing the sights.  I can't imagine this place in the summer - hot and crowded.  Apparently Marseille gets 300 days of sun a year.  I looked on the web and found a climate map for Europe.  This part of France is the warmest part of the country, similar to central Italy.  Who would have thought.

We climbed off the buss at the relatively modern Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde.  This church is built on the highest point of land in the city.  There are quite a few steps to the top.  The statue of the Madonna on the top of the bell tower is 30 feet tall.  In her arms is the baby Christ.

These are the views out to the Sea from the plaza of the church.  The image below shows 2 fortified islands that protect the access to Marseille's harbour.  We took the ferry to the larger of these two islands.

Back in the downtown, above and below.

In the old port, they have erected this large structure with a reflective under-surface.  Kids really seemed to enjoy watching themselves jumping and running around under this thing.  There were also lots of people taking photographs.

After lunch Cathy and Elaine thought it would be nice to take a 3 hour catamaran trip on the sea.   I decided 3 hours may be too long for my sea legs.  While they lined up for their tour, I went to purchase a ticket for a ferry ride to the 2 islands protecting the harbour.  I had 15 minutes to buy the ticket and board the boat.  The line for tickets was perhaps six groups when I arrived.  That seemed not too long.  But, each purchase seemed to take three minutes.  Time was getting very close!  Then it was my turn, and I am about to step up to the window, and a lady buts-in the line talking very dramatically in french about having to immediately buy a ticket.  What am I to do?  How could I even talk to her as she likely did not speak english, or would be unlikely to engage in english if she did know it.  Anyway, I let her go in front of me and she was the last allowed to board.  The next trip was an hour and a half later.  Well, I was disappointed and I decided I would walk back to Cathy and Elaine and see them off on the catamaran.  To my surprise, they were standing by the ticket booth which was not open.  What was happening?  Calls to three different phone numbers listed on the brochure revealed that during the fall season the sailing schedule is intermittant - but there is no word of this at the ticket booth.  We have come to discover that this is not uncommon.  During the off season, many vendors do not update their times of service.

This dual failure in scheduling was quite the coincidence.  If I had not let the lady bump me in line, and if I had not gone back to see Cathy and Elaine off, then the three of us would not have been able to spend the afternoon together.  Somehow I think there is a little life lesson here - something like events that create disappointment may be part of a larger event that turns out unexpectedly well.

We then decided to go back to the ferry I first went to and take a trip to the outer island named Frioul.  We were too late in the day to visit the island Chateau d'If as well.

The image above is of the small fortified island Chateau d'If.

The harbour of Frioul, above.

The island seems to have a few condo style buildings next to the harbour.  The rest of the island seems barren and very windswept.  Outside of the harbour, I did not see any trees.  We found a trail that took us to the south side of the island.  Along the way we walked by a sheltered bay with moored sailboats.

The walk took us past several coastal gun sites from the Second World War.  They appeared to be of German origin.  They were all sealed from access and in a poor condition of repair.  The trail ended at a centuries old fort that had been modified in WWII with then modern coastal defence guns.  There was no access to this site.  There were several other forts on the island.  It seems like every commanding piece of ground had some type of fortification on it.

We stayed downtown for dinner and ate at a second floor restaurant overlooking the old harbour.  The image above was taken from the balcony looking to Notre Dame.  We picked the restaurant because it was to have a jazz band playing from 8 o'clock on.  Well, even though that's what the sign said, they actually were to start at 9.  We decided it would be best to get back to the motel, so off we went.

We have been using Elaine's car that she rented for the duration of the 3 month stay in France.  She wisely purchased a Garmin GPS unit keep her on track.  For some reason this night, the Garmin decided not to work correctly - we got horribly lost - in the dark - all the stores were closed.  It was very concerning as we did not have a paper map as back-up.  When everything seemed the darkest, the Garmin then began to work.  In twenty minutes we were back to the motel, and ready for a good night's sleep.