Okay, Paris is great. We get it. But I have a question for you:
If we go to Paris on vacation, where do people from Paris go?
Do they go to New York? Do they go to California? Turns out a lot of them go to Bordeaux.
It takes two hours to get from Paris to Bordeaux on the TGV. When you ride the tram from the train station into the downtown, it is immediately apparent that this is a vacation spot. Something about the throngs of dazed families wandering the streets in shorts and sandals makes me know: tourists. But these are not the tourists you see in Paris! These tourists are French.
The downtown part of Bordeaux is full of ancient winding cobblestone streets, much the same as you would find in Montpellier or Barcelona. It seems that every block has a gelato shop. Everywhere I went, I had the feeling that I was seeing people who were just back from the beach—but Bordeaux isn’t a coastal city. There are beautiful beaches about an hour drive away, but Bordeaux hugs the curve of a river, built up only on the left bank for historical nautical reasons having to do with the depth of the river on that side.
I stayed in a hotel near the Cité du Vin, an insane-looking museum of wine that I never entered, which is a long walk north of downtown. If I were to go back, I would stay right in the historical district of cobblestone streets: no cars, walkways filled with people shopping and eating. I had an excellent dinner at Le Bouchon Bordelais. But Bordeaux is a medium-sized city, with about a quarter of a million inhabitants—I’m sure there’s more to see than just the tourist area. I saw a little bit of the modern part of Bordeaux when I went down to the Marché des Capucins, a food market a bit further south. On a Sunday morning most of the shops and restaurants are closed, and the market was mobbed.
I didn’t stay long enough to go to any of the wineries in Bordeaux—what I think most people go to Bordeaux to do. I was in Bordeaux for barely 24 hours, and for a specific reason. I went to get a tattoo from Ayrton Sickbird, an artist based at Blue Horse Tattoo who also works a week out of every month in Paris, and a few months out of every year in the United States. He prefers Bordeaux to Paris. “Paris is too much like New York,” he says, meaning too dirty and crowded and fast-paced. I couldn’t help seeing Paris through his eyes when I got back, especially when a taxi across town took almost two hours. Take me back to the banks of the Garonne!
