Short stopover at Bordeaux

Our next stop on our Hipsano-French odyssey was Bordeaux. Bordeaux is, of course, one of the main cities in France, and the center of one of the most prestigious wine-growing regions in the world. I've never been there, and there were quite a few years since Mathilde's visit to the place, so we figured it was a logical place for a stop-over on the way to Angers. Bordeaux is divided into two parts by the mud-coloured Garonne river – we were staying near its banks on the other side of the city center. In spite of the ominously gray sky, we decided to head out to explore the city on foot.

Bordeaux is, more than typically French architecture-wise than any other city, apart from Paris. The architecture is basically classical French architecture form the 18^th century. Personally, it's not an architecture I find particularly inspiring (apart from, undeniably, in Paris), but one has to admit that Brodeaux is one of the most harmonious cities I've been to, architecturally speaking. It all has a very prosperous and clean feel to it, but the place also came across as a bit, I don't know, boring, after what we'd seen in Spain. Don't get me wrong though, we very much enjoyed our walk around historic Bordeaux, but the place just didn't give us the same kind of positive vibes we had in say Bilbao.

Things got better as we checked out a film at the most famous independent cinema in Bordeaux, Utopia. The cinema itself has a pretty interesting history, being located in a former church building in the middle of historic Bordeaux. The movie we saw, Cesare deve morire, by the Taviani brothers, was also excellent, so our evening was off to a good start. Things got even better as we had dinner. After checking out numerous places that all seemed to serve very classic French fare, Mathilde discovered a place called Karma, where we decided to dine. An excellent choice – well cooked, original food, for a quite reasonable price.

The next morning, we were blessed with sunshine, so we decided to hike around some more. It's true that we got a more positive picture of Bordeaux, lit up by sunlight. Our hike took us around all the main sights; Le Place de la Bourse, the cathedral, la Grosse Cloche, the riverside, even some Roman ruins. I read later that quite a lot of money has been spent to clean up to brighten up Bordeaux: the facades of the previously soot-covered houses have been cleaned up, a tramway has been built, the riverside has been redeveloped, and so forth. And it does show! We particularly enjoyed the Basique de Saint Michel, with its modernist stained-glass windows. Or possibly the excellent lunch we had at a Japanese restaurant in the old town, near the Utopia cinema.

The sky was looking ominously gray, a sign for us to hit the road, which we did (so far, it's basically rained all the time we've been driving during our trip in France). All in all, we very much enjoyed our short stop-over in Bordeaux. Although I still wouldn't rank it among my favorite cities in France.