Bordeaux and La Rochelle

Mmm wine.  I made my way to southwestern France to visit Bordeaux and La Rochelle with some friends!  Jen visited Arcachon to see the largest sand dune in Europe and then joined me and Sara in Bordeaux. 

Bordeaux is the 9^th largest city in France and the world’s major wine industry capital.  The town seems really fun; it’s easy to walk everywhere, there are a lot of young people and universities there, and lots of wine!  It’s on a river, which is very pretty to walk (or bike) along, and the people seemed friendly.  There are two famous bridges, the Pont de pierre and the Pont Jacques Chaban-Delma (aka the Vertical Lift Bridge).  The Pont de pierre just seems like a normal bridge to me, but I still took photos.  The Vertical Lift Bridge was recently finished, and it’s Europe’s largest lift bridge!  It can be lifted up 53 meters to let tall ships pass through.  Sadly, I didn’t get to see it go up.

In Bordeaux, we biked around the city, visited churches, walked around parks, ate a lot, tasted different wines, and went to the wine museum.  At the end of the museum visit, they talked about different types of wines and gave samples, so that was fun.  We ended up staying a bit too long, so we had to rush to make our train.  It was a poor decision to bike extremely fast to the station and run to pick up our luggage after drinking wine.  I swerved into a bush avoiding a dog in the bike lane, but I recovered quickly.  And we made the train!

We then took the train to La Rochelle to spend a night in a pretty beach town.  La Rochelle is where bike-sharing started!  In 1974, they launched a bike-share program called Velos Jaunes which had bicycles that were free to take and use.  It’s considered one of the first truly successful bike sharing programs.  Sara is doing a project on Velib, the bike-sharing program in France, so she wanted to visit La Rochelle for that reason (and I thought it looked pretty in pictures and wanted to go).  Ironically, we could not rent the bikes.  You need a pass to rent them (and need to live in La Rochelle to get the pass).  They do have a separate system for tourists, but by the time we went to ride them (5:30), the tourist office was closing soon and said we had to come back tomorrow.  So we sat on them and took pictures.  

There are three big towers (the St. Nicolas tower, the Chain tower, and the Lantern tower) in La Rochelle that were built in the 14^th and 15^th centuries.  We went inside two of them and climbed up to the top to have an awesome view of the city.  One was a military building, and the other was a prison for pirates and enemy seamen.  The prison was full of ornate graffiti drawn by the prisoners and was really cool to see.  It’s also the only medieval lighthouse on the Atlantic coast that is still standing!

La Rochelle is a very fun town to explore and walk around.  We ended up getting sandwiches (and dessert of course) from one of the many bakeries to have a picnic at the harbor.  The beach was also pretty, but the water was cold!  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26879303@N03/