Bordeaux

After crossing the Gironde on the ferry from Royan we spent some time in and around Bordeaux. This is a beautiful city with large parts of it – not only the posh areas - dating from the 18C in pale honey coloured stone, set on a wide curve of river.

The Musee d’Aquitaine http://www.musee-aquitaine-bordeaux.fr/en contains an impressive amount of material relating to pre-history until now. There is an extensive Roman section with a lot of exhibits found in the 19C when they dug up central parts of the city to re-develop it. (Making me wonder on the one hand what they missed from other periods of less interest at the time; and on the other how much is still to be discovered under the 17C city.) Other aspects were less pleasing to me. Almost the entire history of trade and industry (including wine of course) was told from the perspective of those ruling or making profit, with the most recent part seeming like a promotional exhibition for the city. There is almost nothing about the lives of ordinary people. The narrative on Bordeaux’s role in the slave trade seems problematically complacent, excusing the city because it was less active in transporting slaves than Nantes and other cities and concentrating instead on profiting from the other two sides of the slave trade triangle. Which misses the point, it seems to me. What happened in WW2 is hardly mentioned. No surprise to find that that Bordeaux has voted on the right since WW2 whereas Nantes (see earlier post) has had a succession of Socialist mayors over the same long period.

So, not unexpectedly perhaps, I noticed fewer wacky pleasures for public enjoyment than in Nantes. But Bordeaux does have a huge “mirroir d’eau” to get wet in. (And lots of other good things, like an excellent public transport system, few cars in the centre and so on.)

And here is our first sunset for a while. This was not over the sea but over the man-made Bordeaux Lac which is beyond the outer ring road and the other side of the tram stop near where we were staying.

And we did make it to the sea in spite of the crazy holiday season traffic and search for parking. Pylo (or Pilot) dune, south of Arcachon, is amazing.