Bordeaux, France
- Amaris Scipione
- Apr 14
- 5 min read
It’s my first full day in Bordeaux and it’s time to do my favorite thing in France: eat all the pastries!
First, the logistics. I’m checking out of my hotel today and moving to Avalon’s Artistry II. Check-out time will be during my food tour, so I have two options. I can leave my luggage at the hotel, go on the food tour, and then return to get my luggage and go to the ship or I can bring my luggage to the riverboat, go to my food tour, and then go back to the ship. Once I found out that my food tour ends near the boat, it was an easy decision. Last night, I ordered an Uber for 8:30am. This morning, my Uber arrived at 8:40am and the drive took about 15-minutes. The driver pulls up to a building and asks if this is the right place. I say no because I’m not at the river, so he continues driving. I can’t exactly see the boat from the car, but I see another boat. I ask him to drop me off here and he does, but he also seems worried to be dropping me off without seeing a boat. My driver doesn’t speak English, and I don’t speak French, so it was an interesting conversation. It all worked out because it is the right spot and I see the black Avalon tents!
There is a very wide area of concrete between my drop-off point and the ship. A steady stream of cyclist and electric scooter riders are coming from both directions. I see a gap and I think I can make it. I cross the first lane and start to cross the second lane. Shoot! That cyclist is moving fast. Retreat! There is another gap and I take it with my two rolling suitcases. Then, some more open space. Then, two more lanes of playing frogger with cyclists, scooters, and runners. I was never good at that game. Luckily, I made it across unscathed.
The ship is docked, but no one is out to greet guests. It’s 9am and guests from the previous sailing are onboard. The crew is friendly and I am able to leave my luggage on the ship. I’m offered snacks and drinks. I take them up on the water and relax in the lounge for a few minutes before leaving the boat.
It’s food tour time! The meeting point of the tour is in front of one of the cathedrals. It takes me 35-minutes to walk from the boat to the start of the tour. I had considered taking the tram, but after studying the map and realizing I need two trams and a connection, I decided it was easier to walk.
Nikesh from Australia is our guide for the tour and he meets us by the green doors of Basilique Saint-Michel. We walk to the first Boulangerie which is called La Boulangerie Saint-Michel and our guide gives us each a bag with two treats in it. One is some sort of snail pastry and the other is chocolatine. I take my first bite of the snail pastry with caution because I think it has snail in it. Luckily, it’s named because it looks like a snail and not because of its contents. It tastes good, but the thought I was eating snail makes me a little uneasy. The second pastry is better in my option. It’s a flaky pastry with chocolate. You can’t go wrong with that.
The area we are walking in is an area I walked through yesterday. We stopped at a square for a story. Yesterday, I thought the square had a weird energy to it. There were people in the square doing as they would in any other square, but somehow it felt different. There was an emptiness yet also a strong presence to it. It was something I felt, but something hard to explain. Today, I learned about its history. French has a history of public executions, and this is one of the places where people were publicly killed. It was also a place for humiliation. If you committed a minor crime, your head and hands would be locked into this wood (think of those wooden things at Cedar Point in Frontier Land) and you would be locked up there for days.
We continued to our second food stop: Le Boulanger de l'Hôtel de Ville. Here we received a pastry with tomato and zucchini and the Bordeaux-famous canelé. The canelé has a wine history like many things related to Bordeaux. Egg whites are used in the winemaking process which led to a surplus of egg yolks. This dessert was the answer to use the surplus egg yolks. The pastry is made from flour and egg yolks and is also flavored with rum and vanilla. The rum element really surprised me. It tasted similar to a rum cake in my opinion, but with a nice, caramelized outside. I liked the dessert, but our tour guide said many do not like it the first time they taste it but grow to like it.
Maison Lamour Judaïque is the next stop and here I find my favorite treat of the whole tour. It was a citrus pastry with a buttery cookie base and a meringue topping. It doesn’t really sound like something that I would love, but it was absolutely divine.
Next, we stop at a bakery called GRAIN Boulangerie & Patisserie. It’s the best place to buy bread according to our guide. They have samples set out and we try a blueberry pastry which was tasty. Our guide picks up our bread, and we walk to Basilica of Saint Severinus of Bordeaux to enjoy it. One is a grain bread with cheese which is my favorite. Another is a grain bread without the cheese, and the last one is rye bread.
We eat our last snack which is a croissant at Palais Gallien. This is an area with Roman Ruins. We then take a stroll through Jardin Public and end the tour in Chartrons.
Chartrons is an upscale district and here we learn about their longtime mayor. One of his initiatives was to illuminate the city with bright buildings. He made it mandatory for residents earning a certain amount to power wash or laser wash the exteriors of their homes. It turned the city from black to white. Since this is not mandatory for lower incomes, it is a way to tell the wealth of a neighborhood.
The tour finished a couple-minute walk from the ship. I walk back and my room is ready. I unpack and the rest of the group arrives. The group trip is finally out of the group chat!
Avalon has a meeting for special dietary needs this afternoon which I attend. I’m already impressed with how they handle this. The head chef attends and I’m so much more confident that I will eat well this trip.
We have our safety meeting onboard. They play the alarm and show us how to use a life jacket. Then, we all go to dinner.
Dinner tonight is fantastic. I have smooth broccoli soup with almond foam, "Joues de boeuf braisées" (braised beef cheeks) in Bordeaux red wine sauce with broccoli florets, carrots and celeriac mashed potato, and Mousse mangue et basilic (Mango-basil vacherin mousse with lime sauce). I also try one bite of snail. When in France! The snail tastes fine, but the chewiness and the thought of what I ate does not make me go back for more. Wine is included with dinner and it’s free flowing. It’s hard to know how much you drink because the staff is so quick to top-off your glass. It’s a wonderful meal to start our sailing.
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