Bordeaux shines after tourist makeover
The English have always liked Bordeaux. It presents them with a neat and nifty range of familiar French staples: old patissiers, echoey churches, pretty cafes with unsmiling waiters, old cobbled streets, and women who swoosh past, helmetless, on bicycles. Or perhaps the English see something of themselves in the proud, reserved character of the Bordelais. This is a town that never bothered with tourism, that didn't have to: it had already made its money on spices, slaves and grapes.
A decade ago, Bordeaux's buildings were soiled by age and neglect, the town a shabby sump of rotting docks and stagnant industry. Things are visibly changing. Modern trams now purr and whine through scrubbed boulevards; in the main square, the Corinthian columns of Victor Louis's Grand Théâtre seem to glisten. We stayed at the renovated Hôtel de Normandie (7 cours du XXX Juillet, +33 (0)5 56 52 16 80, hotel-de-normandie-Bordeaux.com, rooms from €95, breakfast €15pp), brilliantly placed in the city Centre and near the successful, funky wine school, Ecole du Vin de Bordeaux (3 cours du XXX Juillet, +33 (0)5 56 00 22 85, Bordeaux.com, two-day course on Bordeaux wine from €218pp). The city is cleaning up the knackered old cathedral, too, which the Pope consecrated in 1096 in an early example of urban planning.
Parts of Bordeaux still seem timeless. The old city is spliced by Rue St Catherine, one of the longest shopping streets in Europe, flanked by boutiques and shoe shops. Near the big clock, one of the few surviving landmarks from the medieval period, a spice shop called Dock des Epices (20 Rue Saint-James, +33 (0)5 56 44 41 57, dockdesepices.com) fugs the street with the smell of cumin and cassia. I bought some livid purple salt flavoured with local wine – it goes beautifully with fish. A rather grand cafe, Baillardran (55 cours de l'Intendance, +33 (0)5 56 52 92 64, other branches at baillardran.com), serves exquisite canelés, the local delicacy of tiny cakes of caramelised custard.
La Tupina (6 Rue Porte de la Monnaie, +33 (0)5 56 91 56 37, latupina.com, lunchtime menu from €16, evening tasting menu €60) is a stalwart side-street bistro that's been open for almost 40 years. The restaurant is famous for the heavy cooking of south-western France, but my starter was a huge slice of beef tomato, thick as a Pack of cards, criss-crossed with padrón peppers, while a main of roast veal with vegetables was similarly light. Another fabulous restaurant is Le Petit Commerce (22 Rue du Parlement Saint-Pierre, + 33 (0)5 56 79 76 58, le-petit-commerce.com, two-course lunch menu €12), a bijou fish place with rickety tables.
Source: The Guardian