A weekend in Toulouse

Rachel was arriving quite late via pair of flights, which took her through Charles De Gaulle (because it's difficult to get from London to Southern France on a bank-holiday weekend Friday afternoon) and so I took a trip out to the Toulouse airport to meet her.  Her flight was a bit delayed, and CDG had been struggling, so her bag, sadly, didn't catch the same flight.  They wound up arriving Sunday afternoon, by the time all was said and done, but we had an incredible weekend all the same.

First, on Saturday we slept pretty late, so once we got up, went out for a pastry and coffee, and ate it, it was basically already lunchtime and we were hungry for a proper meal.  So we looked around the neighborhood for some dining options for something more substantial.

We found a place called La Cuisine de Jean (Jean's Kitchen) just a few block set back from the major thoroughfare, in a quiet neighborhood.

It.

Was.

Excellent.

Many years ago, Rachel and I had a lunch at a place we stumbled across in Lyon called Le Bistro Des Voraces that still ranks in my top five meals of all time.   This place was fantastic, and while it didn't bring us near to tears the way that Le Bistro Des Voraces did, it was an absolutely perfect way to spend 2 hours at lunch.  The Gnocchi was pan-fried in Butter until crispy, the sauce that came with the fish was exquisite and the pork was cooked perfectly.  The Pavlova was such a playful, cute little shape and the strawberries were perfectly ripe.  The plating choices were really thoughtful.  All in all, it was exactly what you want from a real French meal.

Since the weather was perfect, we sat en terrasse (outside, on the street) and watched cars zip around the roundabout and the life of a sleepy French neighborhood play out around us.

Afterwards, having heard only that her bag had been located, we went out hunting for shoes that she could dance in that evening.

We found a lovely ballet and dance supply store in central Toulouse, and while we couldn't find a good set of the sort of "teacher's shoes" that she prefers to dance in these days, we did find her a perfectly serviceable set of Ballet shoes (real Ballet flats, as it were), and we got an incredible view of Le Capitole, one of Toulouse's best known buildings, in the bargain, since it was directly across the street.

Enjoying the view while she evaluates options.

The view I'm enjoying.

Afterwards we did a little wandering and shopping, which was fun, and had a couple of odd moments.

One of those was finding The Most Threatening Monoprix.

For context, here are a couple of pictures of average buildings in this part of the city -- lots of gorgeous older stock, plenty of beautiful facades and a lot of wrought iron (Rachel pointed out that the Toulouse streets were the place where she saw the cleanest point on the through-line from New Orleans city streets to French ones):

Meanwhile, in the heart of this older part of the city, we found this Monoprix (a giant department store chain popular across France).

More like Mono-pri-son, amirite?

It was such a strange choice, to have it be so windowless and sharp when surrounded by such pleasing and welcoming facades.

The afternoon was only going to get weirder.

While Rachel was shopping in one particular place, I ducked around the corner to sit and have a cocktail so that she wouldn't feel rushed.  While there, I saw a situation play out that made me feel more like I was in Nashville than Southern France.

I was enjoying my Campari Spritz when I heard the single whoop of an Ambulance making its presence known.

I had noticed a couple of bachelor and bachelorette parties in the mélange of people flooding the streets on such a lovely spring day (the sashes labeled #TEAMBRIDE on one group gave them away), but I hadn't realized until this moment when I looked up that Toulouse, as a party town, has the same silly "pedal your bar around the city" nonsense pedal-bar monstrosities that I'm used to seeing in southern party cities.

You know what I'm talking about, they look like this:  

So here was one of these stupid things on this narrow Toulousien side street. . .  blocking the pathway of an Ambulance with its lights on.

The women on the pedal-bar gave up a shout and began to pedal to the best of their besotted ability but the device isn't exactly build for p e r f o r m a n c e so this had almost zero impact on its velocity, which could only be described as "plodding" (which really isn't a word that should even be applicable to a vehicle with wheels, but here we are.).  There were bollards to keep impatient car drivers from running over pedestrians, which kept the pedal-bar in a narrow channel from which it could not escape.  The Operator, trapped in a hell of his employment's making, seemed either bored with the whole affair or resigned to the stupidity of it.  The Ambulance, to its credit, didn't decide that this situation merited breaking out the real siren just to express its disapproval (and deafening all us poor souls in the cafe as collateral damage).

All I could think as I watched was something like this playing out later on in the day.

_______________

Scene: Interior, Hospital waiting room.

A tearful teenager is approached by a doctor with an expression of deep regret.

Doctor [grimacing] : "I'm afraid we were unable to save your mother.  The stroke was too far advanced by the time she reached us."

Teenager, busting into tears: "But how is that possible?  Her office is only a few blocks from the hospital!"

Doctor [steeling herself to maintain the composure required]  "So, uh, about that. . .  you know those little, um, pedal-your-own-bar things?"

_____________

I was so shocked by the story unfolding in front of me (and in my mind) that I didn't even think to take a picture until the Ambulance was all the way down the street, on the corner, and the pedal bus wasn't even visible.  This despite the fact that my phone was literally in my hand the whole time.  Truly, I'd make a trash-tier photojournalist.

Off they go. Meilleure Chance to both vehicles in the journey ahead.

The second half of my Campari Spritz tasted a little more surreal.

Anyway.

After that, we decided to grab some dinner before we departed downtown, and we stumbled into a tiny little North African tagine and couscous restaurant run by a mother-son team.  Rachel spent a portion of her college years in Marseille and has been a fan of North African style couscous ever since, and regularly bemoans how hard it is to find the comforting meal she craves outside of France.

Our meal (Lamb, Merguez sausage, Couscous, Vegetable stew) was perfect.  Simple, fillling, and pretty reasonably priced for a sit-down meal in the old section of a city.

Happy Rachel

We made our way back to our part of town, took a nap, and then stayed out entirely too late dancing.

All in all, an excellent way to spend a Saturday.

oh right, Labor Day!

I settled into the Airbnb where Rachel and I would be spending the weekend, and went out to the Fusion weekend pre-party dance. All the dances were at a single excellent venue, which was great because I'd found us an Airbnb stupidly close by -- literally 80 meters away.

The dance was lovely and I had a nice time, then slept in the next morning.

I looked forward to spending the next day trying out the local Bakeries to find a great Chocolatine and café  for us to share in the mornings, as our tradition whenever we are in France together, since she would be arriving Friday night.

I also figured I might but some nice cheese from a local fromagerie and maybe also some flowers for the Airbnb, since it was a short visit and it would be nice to make the most of it.

So the next morning I woke and upon going out, discovered I wouldn't be doing any of those things because it was the first of May and so every small shop was closed in observance of the first of May. International Workers Day, AKA Labor Day!

I laughed at myself for forgetting to check the French holiday calendar when making plans, bought some groceries from the local Carrefour, and headed back to the apartment.

The windows looked out on some lovely trees and the wind and weather couldn't have been more perfect, so I left the doors open, did some laundry, and relaxed for the day, instead. 

(A very serviceable ham and Emmental sandwich courtesy of my friendly neighborhood Carrefour, which luckily for me, didn't close for the day.)

French Tacos

It's time for us to talk about the French sense of entitlement to words.

The French language is inviolate. Sacred. The meanings are exacting and precise. They have a governing body (the Académie Française) and it can, with absolute authority, tell you what words mean.

It literally publishes THE official dictionary, which is the last word in French.

"What the Académie Fran-says, Goes."

(Thanks, I'm here all week, tip your waitresses, try the veal)

In spite of this (or perhaps because of it?) the French tend to relish in rejecting any notion that other languages' words might mean A.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. at all.

I find this endlessly endearing and deeply resonant, as a person who has embraced descriptivism in American English especially as The Answer To Maintaining One's Sanity.

I also find it outrageous and totally unacceptable. And then I cheerfully accept it.

Take for example, the tacos.

By which I mean, French Tacos.

By which I mean this:

C'est une tacos.

French Tacos (always with the s, even in the singular) are not strictly speaking, tacos.

Or even moderately speaking. 

Or loosely speaking. 

French tacos have a similarity to the notion of a taco in the same way a star nosed mole -- by virtue of being four legged, and also having a face -- has a similarity to a Great Dane.

French tacos are street food.

And there's a tortilla!

That's pretty much it.

The tortilla is large.

The fillings generally include: meat(can be merguez sausage, chicken tenders, shawarma or any number of other things*) French fries (in which it feels linked to a Greek gyro, in my mind), a melted cheese (often a sauce made with Emmental but others make an appearance) a sauce (a kebab shop sauce like Algerian sauce, white doner kebab sauce, etc.) and vegetables (often some sort of salad mix).

*Although since most kebab shops in French are halal certified so they can safely serve North-African born Muslims, pork generally isn't an option.

The tortilla is filled with ingredients arranged in a flat rectangle, and the tortilla is folded in a sort of origami-shape to match which is why one of the slang terms for it is "matelas" -- French for Mattress.

It has been described as a "rather successful marriage between panini, kebab, and burrito"

The picture above is the one I had for dinner my first night in Toulouse.  Inside were french fries, chicken cordon blue, a mixture of veggies, white donner kebab sauce and cheese.

It was delicious.  It was not a taco.  It was a French Tacos.

If you're in the country -- especially in the southeastern part of the Hexagon where they originated -- I highly recommend you try one if you find yourself craving fast food, or in need a filling, cheap, prepared meal.

From Bordeaux, Toulouse!

I enjoyed the trip out of Bordeaux. It was a cloudy day.  In some ways the Bordeaux suburbs reminded me of Korea, where every spare scrap of land was a garden, or had been terraced into a paddy field for rice.

It's like that, but with vines.

Sadly I wasn't able to get the most striking photos, because by the time we hit the suburbs we were already going at a proper pace for a train and I was facing backwards so things tended to flit by very quickly.

But the countryside of France is, in general, beautiful. Full fields of fresh green grass, chateaux -- and Proper Castles -- in the distance, Tiny towns of ancient homes with ceramic roofs. 

Stone buildings sitting in fields, where they've been for perhaps a hundred years, or a thousand.

It's eternally gorgeous in a way that feels both striking and familiar.

I reached Toulouse refreshed and pleased, scrambling through a charming section of town full of art nouveau architecture to find a co-working space and get a little workbdone while I waited for my Airbnb to become available.

The details of the city blend in ways that can be hard to photograph but are really striking in person.

Then grabbed a simple dinner before going out dancing for the evening.  

... So in the next entry, let's talk about Tacos.

Je ne sais pas lire... et maintenant, je ne sais plus compter?

Am I having a stroke? Nope!  Just the normal challenges of being in new place.

So this morning I woke up earlier than the last couple days and packed up for the train to Toulouse.

I walked down to the train station and arrived with enough time to stop along the way for pastries, and found a place that used the 'southern' appellation for it's pain au chocolate ("Chocolatine" - a regionalism which I only learned about earlier this year). I also ordered another item, a Feuilleté Lardon which I misread off the menu as Feuillette Lardon and pronounced the latter half with the hard "Let" sound I thought it required.

Feuilleté is the word for puff pastry (which honestly I should have learned by now), and the end is pronounced like "yehtay".

I was very confident in my order and the staff were appropriately bewildered by my confident request for an item they had never heard of. 

When they figured out what I wanted and related it back to me I looked back at the sign and realized what I had done, and I wish I had been quick enough to say "ah, désolé, je ne sais pas lire, j'imagine" (oh, sorry, I don't know how to read, I guess)  with the same casual confidence that I had ordered the pastry with. 😅

I would be catching the Intercity train instead of the TGV for this leg of the journey, for you Amtrak folks this is the equivalent of our "regional" service. Except that because France has the sort of train network that we associate with a proper country, the train still operates at something approaching a correct speed.

Even the regionals use mostly assigned seats now, and my seat was place quatre-vingt*-une in Voiture huit. (Seat 81 in car 8).

*(The French language still uses an equivalent of "score" for numbers above 70, so 81 is "four - twenties - one".)

So I swing breezily through the station, snagging a tiny coffee and a delicious canelé cake to enjoy on the train, and then wait until the track is assigned, and make my way to our train.

I wander down the length until I find car 8, and I get onboard. 

I walk down the aisle and ... I count right past 81.

As far as I can tell, there isn't one. 

Other people are climbing around me and my awkward giant backpack to try to make it to their seats (which definitely do exist! I have seen 62 and 90!  Mine should be somewhere around here.) and I'm feeling very Lost American In The Way, so I make my way to the end of the train and put my backpack in the luggage rack so I can be less bulky while I'm searching, and return to the aisle. After a second trip up the aisle without success, feeling like I'm losing everything because maybe the numbers... Maybe the numbers aren't in order?  Did I just? Was that 77 and then 65?  No way... The whole point of numbers is that they can be ordered, surely no one would... It isn't possible... Do I smell toast?

I briefly, step off the rain to make sure there aren't two voiture huits.

On my THIRD slow walk down the aisle, there is is! 81! As of it has been there the whole time, cheekily watching me plaintively wander the aisle and climb past sweet ancient crones and exasperated mothers with prams.

I dive into the seat before it can disappear again, and look up, half expecting the number to have changed as I was sitting and for me now to be in the wrong place.

No, it's still 81, I'm safe. It seems. 

So, having reassuring myself I won't be sitting pathetically in the baggage lock all the way to Toulouse, I start looking at the numbers of the seats in order.

In. Order. 

And it is at this point that I discover that these seat numbers, which are detachable and mobile for who knows what devilish purpose... Are. not. Ordered. 

I need to stop here and say it is my fervent hope that this is the result of hooligans. I need it to be that some Lycée's rugby team from Carcassonne , high on the adrenaline of clobbering Marseille in a David vs Goliath story for the ages, scrambled them all as a prank on the way home while left unattended by their coach.

I need to believe that because I need to be safe from idea that there is an employee of the SNCF who decided that the correct order of the seats was as follows.

(I recorded the ones I could read from my seat, because under no circumstances was I getting up, not on your life).

On my side, the seats went thusly (each is a pair, the first is the corridor, the second the window):

78

77

82!

81(My seat! My precious)

84!!

83

92!!!

93!?!

And on the other side of the car, where I could read more of them: 

98

97

96

95

88!

87

86

85

64!!!

63

61!

62!!?!!!

WHO WOULD DO SUCH A THING?!

Truly, a criminal act had been performed on this poor car.

I consoled myself with my coffee and petite canelé de Bordeaux, which was exquisite.

The legend says that Canelés are a pastry made by nuns in the region, which came into fashion in Bordeaux because a wine filtration method of the age used egg whites, resulting in an abundance of yolks that were given to the nuns.

I'm not sure if this story is true, but the results, made with vanilla and rum, had a deep custard texture and they were delicious.

Madame Liberté, Wine from the earth, Views from on high

I rolled out of bed much more well rested, made some arrangements, and headed out to explore the city for a bit before work.

A thick storm system had passed over in the morning, but I had slept in and dodged that, so the sky was gray and mottled with clouds by the time I was out and about, a perfect sky, in my opinion, for exploring a city.

I snagged a lunch snack from the Carrefour Express near my hotel, and walked to the center of the city around 13:00 intending to climb the Tour Pey Berland -- a gothic bell tower that stretches high above the city, but found when I arrived that it was accessed via timed tickets, so I purchased a ticket for 16:00 and caught a tram north to the suburb of Chartrons, the heart of the Bordeaux wine industry, intending to come back in a couple of hours.

My first stop in Chartrons was a small park in the middle of the district, where I found the small replica of the Statue of Liberty that lives here, her flame held high.   

She was beautiful, her visage as proud as always, and I thought about my grandparents' view of her companion across the sea, as they crossed New York harbor in 1953, headed for Ellis Island to begin their life in the United States, one step in the eternal chain reaction that led to my birth, and specifically to it happening in the United States and not somewhere else in the world.

Then I went and drank three glasses of wine in the middle of the afternoon, and missed my timed ticket to the tower.

In my defense, I was in a museum, and the third glass was the guide's favorite.

A few steps from the Statue of Liberty is the Musée du Vin et du Negocé de Bordeaux.  In English we'd say "the Bordeaux museum of Wine and Trade" (the French word you see here is the root word for "Negotiation", in case you were wondering!)

For the price of 15 Euros I spent an excellent hour in the cellars of a trade house of a Bordeaux wine broker, and learned some really fascinating information.

First, you need to understand the shape of the region:

The Garonne river that flows across the face of Bordeaux comes down from the Pyrenees that are south of the city, and Bordeaux was built up slowly on Marshland on the western bank of that river.

The Garonne is wide, and deep, and so despite being a long way from the Ocean proper, Bordeaux is  effectively the port town of the region, and this means that Bordeaux had more connections to the Atlantic than it did to much of France for a very long time indeed.

Until Napoleon commanded the building of a stone bridge across the Garonne in 1821, it was easier to buy Bordeaux wines in London and Amsterdam than it was in Paris.

The British at one point were importing 45 million liters of wine a year from this region, and almost all of their Claret (a wine you hear about mostly in British literature and culture these days) was made in Bordeaux.   When England lost their access at La Rochelle, Bordeaux became the dominant source of Wine for England and remained that way for many years.

A second interesting thing I learned: Wine is a two stage process, and prior to the establishment of a complete Vine-to-Bottle system at the Chateaus themselves, the second stage (barreling and aging) used to be controlled by merchants.  And more than one merchant would have a contract with the same vineyard.  Since how the barrels are toasted, how long the wine is left in the barrels, and some other factors all impact the exact final taste of the wine, the merchants used to control a sort of secondary brand, and it was common for the wine snobs of that era to not just like certain regions or vineyards, but to say "oh, I prefer the wine of [such and such merchant] from that vineyard."

A third thing: Phylloxera nearly ruined wine. 

In the 1850s Victorian botany nerds brought American vines to England, as part of the British empire's two-pronged endeavour to take everything nice from all over the world to England and also just generally be the absolute worst. 

The vines brought with them a voracious aphid that was not well understood at the time, and American vines are partially resistant to it.

European grape vines are not.

After ravaging England, the Phylloxera plague spread across mainland Europe.  In the span of 20 years, European wine production dropped by something like 70%.

This map gives me a great sadness and also an idea for a new Pandemic game

All functioning vineyards in Europe are now growing a cross-bred vine that's at least partially American because the American vines are resistant to the Aphid when compared to the European ones, and there are only a handful of places left in the world that are still able to grow genetically distinct original European-style grape vines as a result.

I learned a lot more about wine production and history and highly recommend the museum, it was an excellent time even without the great wine-tasting-for-amateurs provided at the end.

I realized as I was finishing up my time in the museum that I would absolutely miss my timed entry to the tower if I stayed for the tasting, but I knew there was also a ticket opportunity half an hour after I had purchased mine, and so decided to gamble on the kindness of the tower staff and stick around, and simply eat the 9 Euro cost of the tower ticket if they decided to be strict.

The wine tasting was excellent -- we got to try a Claret (which is barely exported anymore, only something like 0.05% of all Claret made is exported from the region, the locals drink it for themselves).  It was so bright -- I would rarely use the word "Fresh" in a complimentary sense about wine, but that's how this Claret tasted, and it seemed like it would be perfectly suited to a hot summer afternoon alongside a good gazpacho topped with buttery croutons.

Then we had a conventional red Bordeaux, the kind I'm familiar with.  This one was warm and very dry indeed, with a smoky taste.  Not a bottle I'd buy myself I don't think, but very good as a tasting example, and as part of the tasting they shared with us a local raisin that is made from the grapes of the region where the wine is grown, then coated in dark chocolate -- and tasting the wine again afterwards had such a profound impact on the flavor.  It was really fascinating.  (also, those Raisins were wild.  I would swear they were preserved in apricot or peach juice before drying, they had such a strong peach flavor.)

And lastly there was a sweet white dessert wine, which was added as an option for an extra 3 euro, and was delicious, but very sweet.  The grapes with the peach flavor that I just mentioned made up only 30% of the bottle, with Savignon Blanc being the other 70%, and it was still a very sweet wine indeed.  It needed a strong cheese or an anchovy or foie gras, something rich and salty to offset the sweetness.

So, three glasses of wine later, I careened down the street back to the tram, and jumped off at exactly 16:30 at the tower.

Thankfully the man running the tower was a delightful character who tutted and said very sarcastically "oh no... you are much too late!" as I apologized, before cheerfully directing me to the stairs so I could ascend and finally see the city laid out before me.

Something I have noticed now that I've been living in Pittsburgh for some time -- I have become very fond of how well I understand the "shape" of the city -- the rivers both define the city and also create such strong elevation changes that from around every corner you get some excellent vista view that helps you re-orient yourself and understand how Pittsburgh is laid out and where you are.

Bordeaux, as a patch of reclaimed marshland that is all basically at a single elevation, is . . . exactly not that, and after a couple of days of wandering the streets and feeling like I was somewhere in a labyrinth the whole time with only occasional glimpses of distant church towers to orient myself, I was yearning for a sense of place in the layout of the old city.

The tower provided exactly that, by being so tall that you got to see across basically the entire city in one fell swoop.

It's very tall.

And the views from the top are spectacular.

One of the things I had noticed on the river is the way the bridges north of town had to be built in a way that didn't cripple the city's ability to let tall ships and cruise ships into the harbor of the town, as Bordeaux is still a consistent stop for European cruises.  

That's hopefully easy to understand here, as you can see the lift bridge and tall suspension bridge north of town in the background, and one of the cruise ships that has been permitted through in the foreground.  (This was a moment I really wished I had brought my Serious Camera and lens with me)

My tourism for the day accomplished, I headed over to the local Spaces office to sync up with my team for the day, and then, having realized they'd benefit from a little more help in the evening, I grabbed the makings of a simple dinner from the local grocery and then caught a tram back to my hotel room and spent the evening helping diagnose an interesting software problem.

I had a good companion though, who was 5.40 Euro and worth every centime.

Bit more cheese

Jet lag today was worse than it should have been.  I can blame myself for part of this, because I forgot to take melatonin last night which would have helped.  But mainly I blame the mosquito that got into my room because I had the window open since the evening temperature was so nice last night.

I am pleased to report that around 5am she paid for her hubris with her life.

(Only female mosquitoes bite, if you were wondering how I'm so confident in her gender.  File under: trivia you learn when you date someone with a background in tropical diseases and public health.)

So my sleep was a wee bit disordered but eh, these things happen. 

Despite the disruptions, I forced myself to get moving around 10:30 so that I could start to adjust my internal clock. I figured I would do a moderate amount of walking today (and I did, something like 9 or 10 kilometers in total) so I don't think I'll have much trouble sleeping tonight.

I went to find a pastry which turned out to be a few more blocks than I expected and in the process I walked past the tram line and realized ... I didn't buy a transit pass yesterday when I was at the train station. 🤦

Here's the thing: I don't like the over-dependence we are building on transit apps and directly tapping our bank cards in transit infrastructure.

I realize they're useful to lots of people and trip planning is really helpful for people who don't love obsessing over maps and route planning but well... I DO love those things.

Plus an over dependence on transit apps is enabling a surveillance state which is gross. 

But-and-also-furthermore: it's regressive. It punishes the poor who don't have smart phones or consistent service, by reducing the prevalence of easily accessible alternatives like map kiosks and the purchase of transit cards to major points in the system. And it enables small scale oppressions and limits freedom - the woman who isn't permitted a smart phone by her controlling husband and the kid too young to have one are both now one step further away from being able to move freely around the city.

So I don't mind that the apps exist, mind you, it's fine that people have them. I just don't want them for myself and don't want the infrastructure that provides alternatives to diminish. 

Give me a paper map and a tap-able transit card I bought out of a vending machine please.  In a perfect world, go a step further and integrate card readers for that card into points of sale in the local convenience shops for small purchases and you've developed a fantastic alternative to small change.

Basically peak transit currency was Hong Kong's 'Octopus' card in 2009, is what I'm saying.

Anyway! 

Those machines are not generally scattered throughout the city anymore, so I knew I would have to go to a transit-hub to find what I was after, and I knew the train station would be one such hub. 

As a result I wandered haphazardly back across Bordeaux to the train station, hopeful I'd find a tourist transit system map while I was at it.

I was half right -- I acquired a 72 hour transit pass for €13.90 that will give me unlimited access to the tram, bus and Metro for the duration of my stay. 

More like this please 

...And then couldn't find a map kiosk anywhere. Google helpfully suggested that there was a tourist information center near downtown and that was near the co-working space I planned to visit after lunch, so I caught a tram headed that direction.

I found my map in the downtown customer service facility for the local transit authority.  

And more like this, also! 

The jet lag made it difficult to feel hungry, despite the fact that I had eaten very little, but after wandering for a while I settled on a place called Cosy Tacos and had the hit of French Tacos I had been craving since I landed. 

If you haven't heard me rant about French tacos yet and don't know what they are: don't worry. I'm sure I will give a detailed rundown later in this trip. For now, just know the thing I ate has almost no similarity to the thing your brain conjures when you read the word "Taco."

I finally settled into my co-working space in mid-afternoon (props to my Spaces membership. It's been such a valuable resource the last couple of years) and worked for a few hours, helping untangle a couple of work puzzles and answer some questions before heading to my hotel to drop some things off before heading out to dinner.

The weather was gorgeous and the walk was only 1.5 km or so, so I decided to walk it, and the route that Google suggested to me was great. 

First off, I was pleased to note that in this part of the city Bordeaux is making clever use of modal filters to separate and prioritize non-car traffic in ways the benefit the city and everyone else (bikes, scooters pedestrians).

"Not a car? Go right ahead!" (Utility, civil service, or emergency vehicle? The pillar can be lowered via signals that the city vehicles can broadcast.)

But the real treat lay a couple of blocks further into my walk, when I turned into Rue Sainte Catherine and realized that Bordeaux had pedestrianized almost the entire length of it (it's over a kilometer long), and with the beautiful weather that meant there were thousands of people walking and shopping and eating without a car to be seen. 

This is not a protest or a march or some sort of street fair.  This is just a Tuesday.

It was delightful.

More and more European cities have seen the value in this sort of pedestrianization, and it's really lovely.  Hopefully we can get more things like this in Pittsburgh over my time there.

Also there was a charming scrap metal man along the route! 

My walk took me down this excellent pathway and then spat me out onto the square I mentioned earlier with the neat Column, so I stepped by to take a daytime picture of the detail work on the base.

Behold, the story of Wine! (I guess) 

I also took a picture of the Tortoise that is just hanging out here, because how could I not?

I dropped my things at my room, took a quick work call, and then headed out for dinner to the Georgian place I had spotted the night before. 

There, I had a delicious eggplant starter before turning myself directly into the Find Chaffy "Bit more cheese" cartoon via their absolutely exquisite Khachapuri.

Eating Cheese

Still Eating Cheese

Ate Too Much Cheese

Bit more cheese

It was so good though.

I really need to go back to Tblisi and visit as a civilian.

Afterwards though, I realized I needed to head elsewhere for dessert because I had been in Bordeaux -- where most of my favorite red wines have seemed to originate -- for over 24 hours and I had not had any wine yet.

I wandered into the square and paused to marvel at the darkening sky first, and which point I heard a very strange set of noises.

This magical view was accompanied by. . .roaring?

So, as I'm taking this picture, I hear a sound from one side of the square that sounds like a unified shout of jubilation, and then, a second later, I hear it again from another spot nearby, and then, this time on a five or six second delay, I hear the same sound, from the other side of the square.

It turns out 

(1) UEFA Champions league semifinals are on.

(2) The teams are Paris Saint-Germaine and Bayern-Munich

(3) Bordeaux is a college town with a ton of youth in it that root for PSG even when they aren't playing notorious German rivals.

(4) There are maybe 7 bars within 200 meters of me that are showing this game on one or more televisions, all of them SLAMMED. 

(5) Each of the bars is using a slightly different method to stream the game, so in theory if you were a casual football fan, you could easily go to one of the bars that's further behind, and you could tell when you should look at the screen based on the screams of agony or triumph from across the square.

This was delightful, and I decided to try to catch the end of the game but it also meant the other non-sports bars were dead empty and happy to serve me, so first, dessert.  (I'm a staunch fan of the French national team but less enamored of PSG, generally speaking, though of course I'm still going to root for them over B-M, obviously).

After a very brusque interaction in English with a member of the waitstaff (who I think was trying desperately to get cut so he could catch the second half of the game, poor guy) I acquired the final jewels of my evening:

 A 2022 Château de Fontinelle and the first chocolate mousse I've had in a restaurant that gives Teresa's recipe a run for her money.  It was so good.

It was punctuated by a LOT of the roaring effect I was telling you about, because the game tonight has an absolutely insane scoreline.  (Spoiler, select/highlight to read: Bayern-Munich scored 4 goals! And LOST!)

Afterwards, I wandered over to one of the bars with a giant screen and a tiny seating area where I snagged the last 10 minutes of the game along with a line of like-minded college students, we all stood across the street and gawked over the heads of the paying customers.  The bars were all good sports about this, too busy with everyone still drinking to worry about a few hangers-on.

Now I'm back in my room, wrapping up this entry so that I can have a go at a full night's sleep.

Goodnight!

Arrival in Bordeaux and the Super Krousty

I arrived in Bordeaux and was greeted by the platonic ideal of Train Station. Say hello to Gare St. Jean.

Beautiful ceiling? Check. 

Gorgeous facade on which all the clocks were actually working and keeping time? Check! 

Incredibly massive and beautifully stylized map of the region on one interior wall. Checkmate.

It was less than 2km to my little apart hotel, and the weather was gorgeous, so I decided to walk it and arrived just around sunset.

This part of Bordeaux feels like such a pure collection of French building styles it's almost startling.  It seems pretty clear that this part of Bordeaux wasn't shelled much in either world war, (or this stone is just very durable).

This last picture has an Easter egg. One of my favorite weird things about English is that because of its ubiquity, it sort of represents the monoculture in the minds of a lot of non-English speakers.  This means that sometimes other languages decide to use English words as loaner words to describe a thing, but not the same words that English people use to describe that thing. Take, for example, foosball. 

I'm sorry, your bar has a what now? 

So I have a very nice walk to the hotel.

I drop my stuff, and then go out for another small walk because it was 20:30 and if I sat down I was going to fall asleep instantly and also I wanted food (traveling + sleep deprivation = always being hungrier than is warranted considering how much of your day was just sitting).

I am staying pretty near Place de la Victoire, which includes this beautiful column that is apparently carved with the details and history of vines and wine, which are really central to Bordeaux's culture.

It's also gorgeous and a little mind-bending (at least to my jet-lagged brain) because it twists 45 degrees over the course of its climb, taking an otherwise "normal" tower and making it feel organic and almost grapevine like.

Have experienced a small culture, I set my mind to food.

I had walked past a few French Tacos places on my way in, and was considering going back for one of those, but then I also saw some signs for a thing called a "crousty" or "krousty" and it looked unhinged so once I found out that Bordeaux claims to have invented it and that it's sortof a modern French fad food like French Tacos were a few years ago . . . I decided that would be dinner (in part because the Armenian/Georgian restaurant I wanted to go grab Katchapuri at was done serving food when I rocked up.  I'll try there tomorrow I think).

Anyway, I went to a Krousty place near the bars that ring the aforementioned Place d l V, which were all slameed with students (Bordeaux is a college town and has a huge student population.)

I got to practice my French a little, in the bargain, which was nice.  One of the difficult things about trying to speak French in France, especially in Paris, is that most French people in Paris speak English better than you speak French when you're learning, and want to practice their English and also don't love hearing their language mangled, so they tend to transition to English as soon as you start to struggle. 

But tonight even as I was floundering and mangling it, the fellow taking my order kept defaulting back to French before struggling to recall English words, (I got the vague impression that English might be his 4th language) -- which was delightful because it forced me to try to use what's left of my French vocabulary as the 22 hour travel day comes to a close.

And in the end, 10 euros got me this monstrosity and an Orangina.

A Crousty is apparently perfectly fried chicken tender bits, chopped up and tossed in a wok with some seasoning and a f-ckload of something panko-esque, plus some sriracha on top, which are all layered over rice and a sort of . . . creme-fraiche . . . slash . . .uhh, ranch-like. . . sauce.

Stupid. Irresponsible. Delicious.

10/10.  Would devour again.  And getting served fast food in a beautiful wooden bowl with a real metal spoon was such a treat.  

Stay weird, French Fast Food culture.


Meta-content-note:

I generally won't be posting 3x per day throughout this trip, but for today I had plenty of writing opportunities on the train and plane, so you got a lot of content.

We'll see what cadence I can sustain once the trip starts in earnest tomorrow.

For now, goodnight!