Steps today: 21 936 / 14.46 km
Off to new adventures today - Bordeaux! We arrived just after 10:30AM and were pleased to see the room was ready for us when we arrived. It's so nice to be able to unpack and freshen up before starting our sight seeing... and knowing we won't have to do it later at the end of a long day when all you want to do is collapse.
The hotel was right across the street from the train station, and there were a few lively terrasses right outside the door. This was a picture I took early in the morning on the day we left. It's barely a street to cross, just a tram and if the trains or trams made any noise at night, we never heard it.
Lots of resto options right outside the door! Perfect if all you want to do is roll home after supper.
My principle complaint was the bathroom door in the room. It was not a proper door that shuts, but rather just a swinging glass shower door. ZERO privacy! Great way to stay constipated on vacation.
We started with a walk by the Église Sainte Croix, old and seemingly abandoned...
Then the Église Saint Michel
A lovely walk from there to the river front
Then a PERFECT snack-lunch with a beautiful view of the Porte Cailhau
It was getting hot by the time we were done. The day started off at 7ºC and it was now 23ºC in full sun... and we were not dressed for it! Makes for great pictures with a nice beautiful blue sky, but I was melting.
By 2:30, I was dying for shade but there was not a sliver of it anywhere!!! I was desperate for a cool drink and almost jumped for joy when we finally found a shady spot to have a drink.... with a view of the Cathedral too! (Frank had ice cream)
Around 3:30, some precious precious precious clouds rolled in... ahhhh... sweet relief!
Then a little stroll through the Public Gardens when the sun came out again. Everything was SO GREEN!
Next we headed out to see this city's Statue of Liberty, but then the clouds parted and we were trapped!
What to do? Frank even considered an Uber back to the hotel we were so hot! We eventually made it to a tram station and took it back to the busy part of town where we stopped for a cool drink in the first place we found. I was so desperate, I didn't even care that the place wasn't cute, that the drink didn't taste quite right and that it came in "the wrong type of glass"
The clouds were really rolling in by now, which saved us. It cooled down considerably, and we got back to feeling comfortable. We were refreshed enough after that to take a long meandering walk back to the hotel to have supper in one of the places in front of the hotel.
We made it back to the hotel for supper by 6:30. My food pictures are weirdly tinted... yet it wasn't unusually dark in the restaurant. Ah well.
The clouds that rolled in at the end of the day were harbingers of doom. Solid rain was in the forecast for the next 2 days, and we were only there for 2 more days. We cancelled our day-trip plans to visit Saint Émilion; disappointing, but that's the way it goes on vacation sometime!
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