Wonder and Wander

We had been on the road for a month…Naples, Rome, Tuscany, Florence, a little town in Switzerland, and now Bremen. Each place was unique, wonderful, and intentional, true gifts to us. But I was feeling ready to settle down and actually live somewhere. I might have been the only one, but I was craving a change of pace, a chance to move past “new and exciting” into the privilege of making a foreign place comfortable and familiar. We had taken so many exciting stops along the way, but in my mind, Bordeaux had been the fixed point amidst all the exploration.

Gare St. Jean is a beautiful, elegant train station, opening onto a plaza lined with beautiful, elegant, Hausmann-style buildings. It was a very good beginning! Reality came in soon enough when we learned that there had been a fire that had shut down Tram C for the summer (that was the tram that we were planning to use the most). We pushed and shoved with the other 500 people onto the number 1 bus, and our collective good spirits wilted under the claustrophobia, oppressive heat, and body odor (why, oh why, can’t the French embrace deodorant??). We finally escaped, and walked a few blocks to our new home away from home.

Booking accommodations sight unseen is always a risky business, but the stakes were much higher here in Bordeaux, where our stay would be 3 months rather than a few days. We had been very careful to scour the online photos, ask lots of questions, and get a lease in writing, etc. Regardless, there was so much we couldn’t know about the area, the neighbors, the building, etc. We walked through the old city gate, the Porte Dijeaux, and onto a happily bustling pedestrian street filled with the shopping of my dreams: old books, chocolate shops, cute clothing boutiques, an ice cream parlor, a coffee place, and even a tea salon. You could even catch a little glimpse of the cathedral down at the bottom of the street. Was this even for real?

Paris is one of the top tourist destinations of the world for a reason–it’s beautiful, classy, full of history, art, architecture, and incredible food–but for us, Bordeaux has been a much better place to actually live. It’s a significantly smaller city, which makes it much more approachable. Its historical wealth (being a port city with ties to England, a thriving wine industry, and a steady flow of pilgrims traveling to Santiago de Compostela) makes for an abundance of opulent buildings and beautiful streets. A few decades ago, Bordeaux underwent a significant facelift, clearing a large pedestrian zone in the historical center, cleaning the black pollution off the porous limestone, and making the city a wine tourism destination. It’s working–there are lots of tourists here–but it still feels at least a little bit like a hidden gem.

We spent our first few days doing basic things like laundry and grocery shopping and running to IKEA to get missing necessities (I was afraid I might slice off a finger with the horrid kitchen knives). We also started exploring and eating our way through Bordeaux. We splashed in the Mirror fountain by the Place de la Bourse, examined the statues at Quinconces, and explored the Cathedral de Saint-André. Eleanor of Aquitaine married Louis II there. We tried caneles, the local pastry, patisserie (tarte aux framboises being our favorite), and these incredible cream puffs that put whatever you’ve had from the freezer section of Sam’s Club or Costco to shame.

We also proved that we were American bulls in a French china shop, when I got a little note on our door a few days in. We were stomping so loud that it was impossible to study, wrote our downstairs neighbor. Could we please walk more quietly? We tried. I tiptoed, and started hissing at the kids any time they forgot. We started speaking in hushed tones to match our footfalls, and I thought we were doing much better. Not so. The next day we got a visit from the very agitated and frustrated boyfriend. Le sigh.

We left a gift (the aforementioned delightful cream puffs) as a conciliatory gesture, and that afternoon our neighbors showed up again….this time looking apologetic themselves, and carrying a plate of crepes as their peace offering. We were learning a little bit about the French personality. They are generally willing to voice their opinion/frustration/instruction much earlier than American would, but then they also seem to calm down much sooner than we do. We have received much more unsolicited advice from complete strangers than I think tourists in America get. Most of it, though, is well meant. Put your luggage on the rack. Stand here, not there. Let those people get off first. Move for the wheelchair, please. You are in the wrong area. The green one looks better than the pink one. You get used to it, and it is genuinely helpful most of the time.

We clearly needed time to adjust to the culture, and we felt beyond lucky to have exactly that.