Tuesday, September 5th, it is 6 am and ... the alarm clock goes on! Argh, it's hard! It's still dark as I head to the parking lot where I have to take the bus to Bordeaux at 7:15.

The road is long, but we have a small break on a highway area. It must be said that the bus is full (and with an average age rather high ... shall we say ...). It is not the exit of the club of the 95th age, but it is not far! The trip goes well, I doze a little and chat with the lady next to me. By dint of talking about food and drink, hunger is felt!
We do a quick bus tour of the center of Bordeaux to get a little insight and a view of the banks of the Garonne. Also in the city center there is a cruise ship! But such a ... BIG! It looks like a huge building lying on the water.

If he happens to be there it is thanks to the Jacques-Chaban-Delmas bridge.
This bridge, named in honor of the former mayor of Bordeaux, is a technical feat! The bridge is 575m long, 45m wide and the bridge is at least 13m from the surface of the water, but once raised it climbs to 53m in 12 minutes (all for a weight more of 2'100 tons)! Large enough to pass cruise ships. And allow the crossing of the garonne to 43'000 vehicles per day! The bridge rises about sixty times a year (at a cost of several thousand euros, it is necessary to reimburse the maintenance price and above all the construction price of 156.8 million euros).

The quick bus ride takes us past the place of the purse (next to the mirror, but I do not know what people think of it fantastic ...) on one side and the docks on the other.

Then we go not very far from structures I've seen at Lorient during the reportage in Lorient in 2012 : a base of submarines! (Built during the Second World War by the Germans.)

We then make a quick passage before what would apparently be the home of Mr Juppé (but especially the Bordeaux Courts).

We see the door of the Big Bell ...

... and the famous bridge of Pierre:

This bridge was built between 1810 and 1822 on the orders of Napoleon 1st in order to allow to cross the Garonne otherwise than with simple Bacs. You should know that at this place the Garonne is more than 400m wide! So we end up with a 487m long bridge! (19m wide and made up of 17 arches.)
We pass the old Customs building. Building that generated a lot of income thanks to the shops of wines, sugar colonies and slaves. And in order to force people to pay customs duties, they built the famous Portes (Gate Cailhau, Porte Saint-Éloi (the famous Big Bell of earlier), Porte Dijeaux, Aquitaine, the Porte de Bourgogne and the Porte de la Monnaie) so that people have to go through there to get into Bordeaux from the docks.

The bus finally stops and we start the quick tour on foot. The bus leaves us on the Place des Quinconces, where the castle Trompeyte (currently ''Trompette'') was located:

The castle Trompette (as well as the castles of the Far (now Castle of the Hâ) and Fort-Louis) was built at the request of King Charles VII of France. Not to protect the city, but to prevent it from rising and turning against the kingdom of France. Indeed, Bordeaux was under English domination for 3 centuries until the Battle of Castillon in 1453 (since Bordeaux had rallied again to the English after its surrender in 1451 to Jean d'Orléans, Count of Dunois, lieutenant of the king of France.
We begin with the monument to the Girondins. Monument which is not there to pay tribute to the inhabitants of the Gironde, but to the 8 Girondist deputies executed in the XIX. Currently there is not one of the 8 statues of the Girondins. But there is a fountain and column as well as different bronze statues. Which they could never have seen again the day because they were dismantled by the Germans during the Second World War in order to melt them to make cannons. But the statues never arrived in Germany. They have been hidden by resistants and only recently emerged from their storage in order to find their place.

And while I'm taking a picture of our half-party in front of the monument, an Asian couple is doing her wedding photoshoot right next to us.

Then head towards l'Allée de Tourny. Built around 1757 on the old fortifications of the city, it is surrounded by facades of buildings very worked and for the small anecdote: to separate the balconies, one put (and one still often) large grids with points called ''guard-cuckold''. I'll let you imagine why.

On the way to the Place de la Comedie, at the end of a small street, I see the church of Notre-Dame. While on the other side of the square, the favorite restaurant of Grandpa in Bordeaux: L'Entrecôte!

The National Opera of Bordeaux is located in the buildings of the Grand Théâtre. This one, built between 1773 and 1780 has an internal architecture of the auditorium decorated with blue, white and gold (with a capacity of 1'114 seats). The facade is decorated with 12 statues of the muses (left to right): Euterpe (muse of music), Urania (muse of astronomy), Venus (goddess of love), Calliope (muse of epic poetry and Terpsichore (muse of dance), Melpomene (muse of tragedy), Thalia (muse of the comedy), Polymnia (muse of rhetoric), Juno (wife of Jupiter, goddess of fertility, Minerva (goddess of wisdom and reasoned war), Erato (muse of lyric poetry) and Clio (muse of history).



We return on the docks (on the quay Louis XVIII) and head towards the restaurant. I take this opportunity to make some more photos before the meal.

And here we are at La Belle Époque: a restaurant decorated with enamels on the walls and the ceiling.

As a starter, a thin slice of foie gras with onion confit. In flat, half a duck breast accompanied by a little gratin and vegetables. And in dessert, an apple crumble. The whole is watered by a red Bordeaux (CHau Tour de Luchoy of 2012) and a Sauvignon blanc (CHau Piconat of 2016).

After this meal, we take the bus to walk along the docks and arrive at the main part of the exit today : the Cité du Vin!
The project of a cultural center on wine dating back to 2009 has evolved to become more ambitious and try to be the national center on wine... Became the Cité du Vin, and inaugurated in 2016, the bet seems successful :
- 400'000 to 450'000 visitors a year currently,
- 13'350² dedicated to wine, to the vineyard, its history, nature, transformation, understanding, values ​​and ceremonials.
- 8 floors including a wine library of 9'752 different wines representing 88 countries, an auditorium with 250 seats, a complete floor for the discovery of the vine and wine, a stage devoted to temporary exhibitions, wine tasting places, panoramic restaurant and on the 8th floor, from the top of its 55m, a belvedere.
- technology at the service of tradition : participatory digital workshops, projections, 8 languages ​​available, a lot of tactile technology, but not only !
Before entering the building as calls ... It's supposed to be an old vine and also to think about the form in which the wine takes when rotated in its glass.

A small clarification before starting the tour: we will have only 2:30 to visit the City of Wine... then it would take a full day.
And now the visit ! After having taken the tickets and received the instructions, direction the exp... well no, before that we receive headphones to be able to interact with the various panels and activities. After a little struggle to regulate the device and to make it work properly, I take advantage to discover a little quickly, I admit, the cultivation of the vine, then wine (thank you Bacchus!), Cropping methods to the 4 corners of the world told by winegrowers.

On a wall spreads the 60 main grape varieties of the wines of the world with many explanatory videos. Next to it is a kind of box, where sight, smell and hearing are mingled for the understanding of the fermentation of the wines. Farther away are enormous wooden columns, each with its touch screen round like a table, representing one red wine, the other white, 3rd rosé wines, a 4th column for sparkling wines and the last for botrytised wines (sweet wines such as Monbazillac, Loupiac, Sauterne, Sainte-Croix-Du-Mont, Côteaux-du-Layons, etc... thanks to a noble rot present on the grapes).
Upper floor, long tables where stands objects and food... are found under glass bells with pears and copper cones. A true Steampunk environment! Here we are told the colors and aromas of the wine, the odor mixtures .., and some smells easy to recognize ... but others much harder! It is very interesting, even for me who is versed in perfumery. But it is above all very well staged didactic. They allow themselves to be easily taken to play and try to guess the smells by closing their eyes so as not to see what is under the bell.

After passing through the history of the wine at the double (not read or enjoy, damage) I leave the expo by having only done the second and third floors due to lack of time. I do a quick pass by the shop and then head to the wine bar ... and there ... WOAW! It is relatively small, but the layout and especially the number of bottles sellotape me ... it's beautiful! And it gives a damn desire! I go around (literally), looking at labels, traveling to other countries, tilting from time to time on a name that I know and often passing by because of the price.

Unfortunately, the clock is turning and it's time to go back. So I go back to the bus, no purchase for me, but ideas and cravings. The return journey takes place in the general drowsiness and arrive at Brive with nearly an hour ahead. (I would have preferred this hour more to the city of wine ...)
I would have to go back ... but devoting the whole day to the wine city!