Bordeaux

November 25th- Bella’s 5th birthday in France!- Bee was woken up to singing and a hello kitty purse before heading downstairs to a wonderful petit dejeuner of croissants, French bread with fresh preserves, hot chocolate, coffee and thick tart yogurt. After filling ourselves up we headed out for a day of exploring the city. We enjoyed the large gothic cathedral of Saint Andre (just a touch smaller than Paris' Notre Dame) and when it was raining we ran into a little brasserie for coffee before going to an exhibit on the male nude as seen through the eyes of the French ‘official’ academy painters (the only thing we found open). After a quick shopping trip for Eilidh (whose legs are growing too long for her pants) and lunch we went to the Centre National Jean Moulin ( French resistance museum) which was very moving. A lot of what we saw we didn’t understand (copies of orders and strange metal parts that did mysterious things) but the diorama of Normandy was interesting, along with photos of some of the heroes of the Frence resistance (Charles de Gaul was one of the leaders!). We had a wonderful talk about what it must feel like to have your country taken over by an evil force and the heroes who secretly fought against Hitler’s forces. We all got a little teary-eyed as we looked at the badges that people in the camps had to wear which indicated what brand of evil they were: the gold star for Jews, red triangle for French political prisoners, pink triangle for homesexuals, etc. It helped to explain to the girls a little bit why there are so many monuments to the martyrs of World War II here- the people of France were literally caught in the middle.

For dinner we went out for a fancy dinner near the cathedral (the same place where we’d ducked out the rain earlier and had ackwardly attempted to order drinks with our terrible accents). The highlight was the potato tarts and sweet potato puree with our beef bourguignon which reminded us that it was also thanksgiving and that we didn’t need to cook a turkey this year!

key to badges that prisoners would have to wear in work camps during WWII.

Riding the tram to the end of the line and back.

"I don't want to learn fractions at dinner!"

Massive sculpture to advertise French-grown produce.

November 26th- For our last day we went to Bordeaux’s Beaux Arts museum and spent a long time looking at their collection (along with some great hide and seek cards for the kids). They had a very small but high-quality collection and it was nice to not be overwhelmed by masses of art for a change. We enjoyed the Dutch collection and the Italian Caravaggio-esque collection, then were wowed by the French collection, including one large portrait of the port of Bordeaux with fascinating details.

After lunch we walked to Bordeaux’s famous reflecting pool near the river (sadly, our inexpensive lunch warmed up in a microwave was far tastier than our gourmet meal we had paid 3 times as much for the night before) and took some silly pictures along with a few other tourists before wandering into a huge antique market lined with everything we could imagine. After buying the kids winter coats we headed home for some relaxation before going out for some dinner. We were all sad to head home as we truly enjoyed our time in Bordeaux, even with the constant fall drizzle. We decided that its actually been quite a treat to see France without the crush of fellow tourists. Its just life as usual- people doing their Christmas shopping and picking up their kids from school…

Our hotel.