The gates of Bordeaux

An early start to catch the 8:14 train to Bordeaux, to allow time to walk the 1.6kms to the station, having prebooked our tickets online. It was a quick 33 minute trip into the heart of Bordeaux where we purchased a 24 hour travel pass. We caught our first tram of the day, alighting near the Pont de Pierre, the “stone bridge” built on the orders of Napoleon.  It was the first bridge in Bordeaux and has 17 arches, in recognition of the number of letters in Napoleon Bonaparte’s name.

There are six Bordeaux gates that formed part of the defensive wall of the city.  We saw our first, the Cailhau gate of Bordeaux, which looked like a medieval tower. The gates would form a key part of our walking tour later that morning.  

The Miroir D’Eau, water mirror, was a little dry when we passed it.  Opposite the Place la Bourse, the pool looked dry and uninteresting.  Little did we realise its beauty till we returned later. Being a little early for the tour, we had time for our first café coffee, a nice cappuccino but very expensive at 5 euros each. 

The walking tour we had booked originally had been cancelled as the guide was ill, and the organisers had booked us into the “Walk is Free” tour.  There were only two other people on the tour, Peter and Ralitza, a couple currently living in Belgium. Our guide, Nick, was passionate about Bordeaux, and particularly the history of Eleanor of Aquitaine.  We started at the Grand Theatre, which opened in 1780 and is adorned with 12 statues – nine muses and three goddesses from ancient mythology. The muses represent music, astronomy, epic poetry, dance, tragedy, comedy, rhetoric, lyric poetry and history, and are accompanied by the goddesses Venus (love), Juno (fertility) and Minerva (wisdom and war).

Nearby stood the sculpture, Sanna, a temporary work much beloved by the locals. We worked our way around the rest of Bordeaux’s Golden Triangle, with its elegant buildings, squares and pedestrian streets.  We stopped at another of the city gates, the much plainer Dijeaux gate.  

Nick gave us a detailed history of Eleanor of Aquitaine, as we stood outside the cathedral where she wed her first husband, King Louis VI, King of France, a marriage that was later annulled.   As the cathedral’s original tower could not support the weight of the bell, a separate bell tower was built next door.   

 The next city gate was the impressive Porte de la Grosse Cloche, the Great Bell Gate.  The bell weighs more than 7 tons and rings on the first Sunday of each month at noon, as well as 6 times a year for major celebrations. Then we visited the Porte de Bourgogne a medieval gate before exploring a little of the culturally diverse area of Saint Michel. 

We returned past the Cailhau Gate and this time the water mirror lived up to its name, with a beautiful reflection of the Place de la Bourse.  We enjoyed the tour and getting to know Peter and Ralitza and were delighted to meet up with them again as we headed to the Marche des Capucins.  We ended up having lunch together in a nice outdoor café that specialised in cheese dishes and were briefly entertained by some Brazilian buskers.

It started raining as we made our way to the Cité du Vin, and bade farewell to Peter and Ralitza.  Over the next few hours, we used our English headsets to journey through fascinating exhibits on different aspects of wine – including its history, vineyards and terroirs of the world, the vine, winemaking, sensory experiences, different types of wine and the development of wine in Bordeaux.  All very interactive and extremely well done. We finished with a glass of wine at the Belvedere on the eighth floor, with views over Bordeaux. We spent longer than planned at the museum so were on a later train, finally reaching home at 8.30pm, grateful that we had leftovers for dinner. 

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