Wendy's Platter…travels

Nothing like a vacation from your vacation to appreciate a vacation!

An over-the-top vibrant long weekend with a sea of pink, a wine immersion, a two-day street party celebrating the new and the old, and some very old artwork that almost seems new. Confused? Curious?

Let’s set the scene. Bordeaux, on the southwestern side of France did not make our original overall itinerary. But after many friends’ recommendations, we decided to make it a long weekend trip from our Thiers nest (about a five hour drive one way). Deciding when to go was easily solved when I got online and found the Fête du Vin Nouveau et de la Brocante happening the weekend of Oct. 25-26.

Vin nouveau is a wine fermented for only a few weeks after harvest which is usually in August or September, leaving it with a fresh, fruity flavor. As it doesn’t have the shelf life of traditionally fermented wines, vin nouveau is enjoyed in the months of October and November. Although vin nouveau can be either red or white, we found that the red to be far more enjoyable.

But what is “Brocante”? …a flea market with a bent towards antiques. Although the last thing we needed was anything that would require space in our luggage, what harm could there be in looking?

Now we knew when, where would we stay? For once, it looked like a hotel was more to what we needed than an Airbnb. I had no desire to cook or shop, so a hotel would answer our needs…but we needed one that was not astronomical. I found the Hotel Notre Dame (loved the name) which said it was located in the Chartrons area of Bordeaux. Brilliant me remembered that the Fête du Vin Nouveau… was taking place in the Chartrons area, so it should be an easy walk. I booked three nights with breakfast included so that we could have a full two days in Bordeaux.

Parking was the next issue as there was no parking around the hotel. I couldn’t understand why, but nonetheless, found a parking lot where we could park the car for three days for a reasonable fee. I figured we would pack simply and carry our luggage on our backs for the two kilometers to our hotel. No problem.

Bordeaux is one of the biggest wine areas of the world. Friends Fred and Bob had visited Bordeaux last spring on a tour and raved about the Cité du Vin, which was everything you ever wanted or needed to know about wine, plus tastings and classes. OK, Cité du Vin should be good for an hour or two.

Given our great experience with free walking tours in many other cities on other continents, we found one in Bordeaux. What seemed best was to do the tour on Friday, just after driving in, as it would orient us to the city. We signed up for the 5:00 pm tour.

On the Bordeaux tourism online site, I noticed a mention of the Challenge du Ruban Rose 2025. “Ruban rose” means pink ribbon, which is the French (and world-wide) breast cancer awareness logo. To raise money, the event offered a seven kilometer running or walking challenge. I immediately enrolled both Nick and I as we felt like we had missed an opportunity back in Ribeauvillé when we watched the walkers outside our window at the end of their five kilometer walk. We were not going to miss this one! We were put on a waiting list, but by the night before we left, I was “un-waitlisted.” I needed to pick up my “bib” in Bordeaux the next day before 5:00 pm.

Hmmm, our little weekend jaunt to Bordeaux was filling up. We left Thiers early and arrived in Bordeaux by about 3:00. Perfect. All we needed to do was figure out how to open the door to the gated parking lot. We finally succeeded to then be flummoxed about how to escape as a pedestrian. We hemmed and hawed long enough for another human to enter and we caught the door. We decided to put off worrying about getting back into the gated parking lot until later. We were off and walking.

Two kilometers is not a long distance. But with the added 25 pounds or so of luggage for each of us, it added up. When we got to the hotel, we found it on a narrow street filled with tiny shops, cafés, wine bars, and antique shops. It was charming. Our room was on the second floor (the American third floor) with no elevator. Not an issue.

The quai we became extremely familiar with along the Garonne River in Bordeaux. The athletic shop aptly named (at least for us), the Au Vieux Camper (the old camper) is where I picked up the t-shirt on the right and my “bib” with the number. My mom’s traveling sewing kit came in handy with safety pins to attached the bib to the shirt.

We dropped our luggage and headed out to make our two rendez-vous, first to pick up my “bib” for the Ruban rouge challenge, and second to make it to the walking tour. The bib pickup was in some warehouses that had been converted into essentially a shopping mall, with lots of restaurants looking out on the Garonne River. The walk from our hotel was two kilometers to the pick up place. No problem. Although we got there in time, I got my bib and T-shirt, we suddenly realized that we needed to get to the walking tour start place.

Consulting my Trip-it itinerary, I put in the address and we walked back along the same route for about a kilometer. I suddenly realized that I had mistakenly put our hotel address in. Now we were going to be late.

Probably the most noticeable thing about Bordeaux is how clean all the buildings are. As part of the UNESCO World Heritage site designation, Bordeaux is obligated to have its buildings cleaned every ten years. Our Irish guide on the right pointed out that the middle gate to the city acted as a mini palace for one of the kings who didn’t want to make too much of a show in the turbulent times, He also had canons pointed at his own people. Maybe he should have been worried.

Here is where JPW (Japanese Power Walking) once again, came in handy. We had 3.3 kilometers to cover in 30 minutes. Remember two things: #1 We had already walked four kilometers in the previous 1.5 hours. #2 We are both 73 years old. Bottom line, we made it, just five minutes late with apologies to our group of a dozen folks.

A typical Bordeaux café on the street with a typical café dinner of steak frites and a mushroom sauce.

Our Irish guide who had lived in Bordeaux a great deal of his thirty or so years, was charming and informative. It gave us the broad stroke history of Bordeaux and actually helped cement in some of the French history we have been learning over the past month. After the tour, we took a leisurely stroll back towards our hotel, now about two kilometers away. We found a charming café, chose an outdoor table and had the “Steak frites” meal I had been wishing for. Although the steak was a bit tough, it was perfectly cooked, well-seasoned, and had a delicious dipping sauce. And, of course, I had a glass of fine Bodeaux wine while Nick had a beer. We had earned it after about 10 kilometers of walking!

The view from my hotel room. Top left is straight down to the lovely samba music being played in front of a cafe. Up the street and down the street, vendors are setting up their wares. It would soon be bustling. Straight across the way was this colorful building with eye-like windows looking at us.

Saturday morning we enjoyed our hotel breakfast, took a little time in our room before we headed out to the Cité du Vin. I was finishing up my last blog post when I heard some gentle samba music through our window. Being an 18^th century building, I could open the windows to look out. Below us on the street, I realized that the “brocante,” the flea market, was set up on our street. We were dead center on the main street. The music was by one of the many street musicians spaced out along the Rue Notre Dame that is only about 0.7 kilometers long in total.

Above the vendors are getting started. Below is the infinite oyseters servced with vin nouveau and some bread.

Leaving our hotel, we were enthralled that the street that was lined with vendors selling wither “antiques,” food, or wine. In front of the church in the next block was a larger concern with crates of oysters and plenty of vin nouveau to wash them down. Nick and I ordered a plate, two paper cups of vin nouveau (only 1 euro each!) and found a precious spot at a plastic table. The oysters were a bite of the ocean with that fresh new wine as the perfect chaser.

Walking down the quai, just past the bridge is the spectacular Cité du Vin. On the top right is a map of the building. Several floors are not open to the public.

Knowing that our hotel was dead center to the festivities, we decided not to get side-tracked from our destination of the Cité du Vin. It is located on the river down near where we had picked up my bib for the Ruban rouge walk. We knew the way.

What took us by surprise as we turned the corner was the glass architectural structure that was inspired by the movement of wine in a bottle. It was spectacular multi-story sculptured building. And, as we were soon to find out, what was in the building was also deserved that superlative.

The bell jars used to give hints on the vocabulary of wine were a challenge. Above right, when Nick saw all of the upside wine bottles filled with light filaments, he suddenly saw a new use for his thousands of milk bottles. I pointed out that gallon milk jugs may present a image from the graceful wine bottles.

I hesitate to refer to the Cité du Vin as a wine museum as it is not so much a museum as a way to experience wine using all of your senses and all your different knowledge bases: geography, history, science, pop culture, etc. The building has several floors, the first includes a vast wine shop with wines from every country that produces a wine, a snack bar with plenty of wines by the glass, a gift shop and more.

We were handed a cell phone-sized computer with headphones and directed to the third floor where the permanent exhibit lives. At first, I was slightly disappointed that there was only one floor with an exhibit open to the public, but I soon learned that the one floor contained more information than I could grok in one afternoon. Each exhibit was activated by the computer you held and you listened and watched as each geographic wine area was described by the growers in France, Argentina, Italy, California, Greece, Georgia (near Russia), New Zealand, Australia, Oceania, Switzerland and more. The different techniques used to overcome the challenges of their terroir (area) was breathtaking.

The history of wine and historical impact of wine culturally, geographically, and economically kept me fascinated. The wine-making process of reds, whites, roses, and sparkling wines were shown and explained. But perhaps the most fun was the area where the vocabulary of tasting a wine was broken down. Under bell jars fitted with small rubber bulbs that could puff out some of the scent from inside the jar were at least forty different “aromas” that are often used to describe wines.

In my ignorance, I thought folks who used the wine verbiage to describe a wine were being pretentious. But standardization of terms is important and as I made my way around the bell jars, I began to understand the process and wished I could have had another day (or week or month) to begin to unpack all of the knowledge in the Cité.

To access your free glass of wine that came with your entrance fee, you take the elevator to the top of the building and get in line to pick your wine. There were at least 30 wines from around the world being offered. I chose a Bordeaux red and white so Nick and I could try both. We walked out onto the narrow terrace that surrounds the top floor. At eight floors up, you had a view of all of Bordeaux as you made your way around the terrace. There were probably a thousand people in the museum that day, a surprise to me for the end of October.

With more wine knowledge than I could fit in my brain, we headed back to our hotel where we found the Fête in full force. The street was packed with families, couples, old folks, young folks, and just plain folks. Wine was flowing freely, voices were boisterous, and although Bacchus would be proud, most folks were not overdoing. The Fête closed down at 7:00 pm and folks packed away their treasures knowing that they would be unpacking them again in the morning.

A nicely cooked tuna steak on a bed of risotto and a particularly well seasoned and fried calamari appetizer from the cafe around the corner.

We had dinner at the café on the corner and headed back to our room, knowing that we would be up early to get to the Challenge Ruban Rouge.

We got up early, despite the extra hour we were gifted by the end of daylight savings in Europe on Saturday night. The breakfast at our hotel was delayed an hour because of the time change, but we were still out in enough time. To reach the start of the walk by 8:45 am, we needed to walk 2.5 kilometers to get there.

Folks are starting to arrive at the starting gate. Little did we know that within the hour there would be more than 10,000 of us.

Just as we left, Nick checked his email and he had been moved off the waitlist! Now we had to hurry to see if Nick could actually sign up. Good old JPW! And we made it to the Ruban “Village” that was on the river by 8:45. As we were walking, we saw hundreds of others already decked out in their pink T-shirts making their way to the towards the race. There were lots of groups who had made matching costumes to complement their pink shirts…hats, robes, makeup. It was a festival of goodwill. There were also plenty of folks who had photos on their backs of loved ones they had lost. Nick and I didn’t need a photo to remind us of our loved ones lost Laurie, Becca, Julie, and Jenny or the loved ones winning their battles, Sue and Carrie.

One hour after the official start, we finally made it up to the starting gate. I took a photo of those behind me and a photo of those in front. All that pink made me smile.

Although the seven kilometer walk was slated to start at 9:15 am, there were so many people there, it was 10:15 am before we made it to the starting gate. Everyone was full of joy and life, a real tribute to those who could not be there with us.

The Bordeaux Pink Ribbon Challenge had record attendance on October 25 and 26, with 25,000 participants throughout the weekend. More than $150,000 was raised, but raising the awareness was the most important goal, and it was reached.

On top is a panorama taken from the bridge by the Cité du Vin. It is about halfway through the seven kilometers. If you can zoom in, you can see the pink chain of walkers in the distance. On the bottom right, we are about a kilometer away from the finish which is across the river from where we started.

The seven kilometer route took us along the part of the Garonne River that we had walked the day before, but then, by the Cité du Vin, we crossed the interesting bridge, Pont Jacques Chaban Delmas, to take us to “rive droite” (right side of the river if you are looking downstream). We then walked upstream along the rive droite to the finish line near the old arched stone bridge, the Pont de Pierre. Jubilation! We finished, but it was not a competition for walking times, but a competition to get the world to help find a cure for breast cancer.

We have finished the race! Our job was to get back to our starting point to pick up our backpack. Still another kilometer. But then there is getting back to the hotel!

We still had two kilometers to walk back to our hotel where we knew we would quickly get swallowed into the Fête de Vin Nouveau et de la Brocante. And swallowed, we did…lots of vin nouveau, good food, good music, and dancing. Even Nick and I made it to the dance floor until we realized that we were among some truly great swing dancers and whom we chose, prudently, to cheer on from the sidelines with one (or two) cups of vin nouveau, rather than make fools of ourselves.

The dancers took delight in each other. Some of the better dancers started an impromptu “dance off” to the delight of the crowd. The dance off ended in one giant group dance. Good spirit were in abundance.

Again, by 7:00 pm, the party was wrapped up, the vendors were putting away their wares, the street turned back into the small, street, almost alley way buttressed by tall stone buildings.

After more than eight miles of walking that day, we collapsed onto our comfortable beds, hoping to get an early start for our drive back to Thiers that would include a tour of the Lascaux caves, home to the famous 25,000 year old cave paintings.

Nick is waiting for our tour to start at the Centre International de l’Art Parietal. On the wall was a photo of the four men who discovered the caves in 1940. Missing from the photo was the dog who actually found it!

Only two hours from Bordeaux, we arrived at the modern building built into the hill of the Lascaux IV, Centre International de l’Art Parietal in time for our audio self-guided tour. Like at the Cité du Vin, we were handed what looked like a cell phone with a headset. We were given no instructions and the interface was different from the Cité, but eventually we worked it out.

The first stop was out on the terrace where our computer showed us where the actual caves were in the hillside. What we were going to witness was a replica of the caves, as the actual caves are protected and secure.

The caves were re-discovered (the first time was 21,000 to 25,000 years ago) in 1940, by a teenager and his dog who stuck his nose down a hole that had appeared after a tree fell. The cave had been sealed by rocks and dirt for more than 21,000 years, leaving the caves sealed from the elements.

The discovery of the caves created a sensation that brought millions of visitors to the site. The damage done by the visitors became evident in the 1960s and the caves were closed to the public. The International Center was built to create a replica that would allow the public to experience the beauty of the drawings without damaging a priceless gift to the world.

All of the paintings looked like masterpieces to me. My favorite was probably the “falling horse” on the left as it so accurately showed the distress of the horse and the feeling of falling.

The replica of the cave gave a sense of wonder and awe at the sheer beauty of the drawings and artistic use of colors and motion of the animals. Punctuated around the drawings were geometric shapes such as boxes or grates, dots that seemed to tell a story, and lines that could be interpreted as arrows. But my overall impression was that I was in the presence of great artists who had a story to tell.

The remaining parts of the museum broke the drawings down into how they were made: with what media, what tools, and how they were applied. Each small section of the caves were replicated again and a video applied to the section to show how and in what order the drawings were applied.

It is not known in what period of time the paintings were done…a day, a week, over generations? By men, women, children? By the best artists of the day, or were they all great artists? More questions than answers, but the mind is blown by its beauty. The last few days have raced me through millennia, wines, seas of pink, and the truth that France has more than 100 Days can reveal.

Next up is Lyon, the ancient capital of Roman Gaul.

©2025 Wendy Platt Hill

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