Two days in Bordeaux doesn’t really do the place justice as we stayed mostly around the Saint Paul area. Well, we think we stayed mostly there, as the streets don’t demarcate the place very clearly. We really do want to get back to Bordeaux and see more of it, but if you are only stopping by, as we were, the city centre has lots to offer. 

This is an expansive city, known for wine and architecture, where you will spend a lot of your time eating, drinking and window shopping, or shopping proper. The urban area has about a million people, so it is a fair old size. We only spent two days in Bordeaux, but a much longer trip would be well justified given the city’s size and the amount of culinary and sightseeing activity you could get through.

What’s the city like?

It has an ancient feel at times, given the many buildings whose history stretches back to Medieval times, but this is mixed with a later style as the 18th Century was a busy and prosperous time for Bordeaux. 

Many of the city centre’s streets, especially the shopping areas, are pedestrianised, leaving plenty of room for walkers. Generally, walkways are slightly more widened than the often one-way car spaces, giving plenty of room for terraces and beer gardens for the restaurants and bars. 

Any traffic will typically be service vehicles, though the city streets have a fair few cyclists moving through them too. 

A history of wine

Wine has shaped Bordeaux and its surrounding areas since the time of the Romans, with the imperialists developing viticulture around Burdigala, the Roman name for the place, in the 1st century AD. Bordeaux quickly became both a producing area and a major wine-exporting port. 

Around the 12th century, Bordeaux fell to the control of the English crown, and English demand sparked a huge expansion in the wine trade. After Aquitaine was returned to the French in the 15th century, trade with England declined. Bordeaux developed strong trading links with the Dutch and northern Europeans, with Dutch merchants influencing wine production, storage and transport techniques.

The 18th and 19th centuries were major periods of prosperity, with the city's wine merchants exporting enormous quantities. That wealth contributed significantly to the 18th-century building boom, transforming Bordeaux into the city we see today. UNESCO acknowledges Bordeaux’s development to its role as a wine-producing region. 

In 1855, Napoleon III ordered the famous Bordeaux Classification, ranking Médoc red wines, Château Haut-Brion from Graves, and the sweet wines of Sauternes and Barsac. The classification largely remains to the present day.

Bordeaux remains one of the world's best-known wine regions, particularly for Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot reds, alongside dry whites and the sweet wines of Sauternes and Barsac.

You can pick up a decent bottle for as little as a tenner in many of the shops in town. We did, and it was a decent swig, and of course you can spend more on the more expensive stuff. Just remember to open the bottle a good half hour before digging in. 

Travel connections

We arrived in Bordeaux on an Aerlingus flight from Dublin en route to Bilbao. The idea was then to get the train down to Hendaye, which is on the border, then over to Bilbao on the Euskotren. The plan worked well, except for our accidental detour which took us to Lourdes after sitting at the wrong end of a train that separated on down the line in Dax! You can read more about the adventure at the following link and you can read about Dax, which has its own vibe, at this link. 

Getting into and around town

There is a tram network that takes you from the door of the airport right into town, and will also get you to the train station whenever you leave, or if you arrive by rail. You can check out the offers on the tram at this link, and you will find various offers, which we availed of ourselves during our trip. 

The Saint-Paul District (Quartier Saint-Paul)

We hung around this area mostly, as it is dead centre and very vibrant and medieval looking. The ancient neighborhood is replete with cobbled streets and has a lively atmosphere, and you will find many’s a wandering traveller looking for an authentic local vibe. Its lively squares don’t disappoint, and there you will find antique shops, cafés, and monuments like the nearby Grosse Cloche, which is the old town hall’s bell tower.  

It grew as a suburb in the 12th century before being incorporated within Bordeaux's expanding walls and fortifications during the 13th century. The area was known originally as Saint-Éloi, as the current Église Saint-Paul-Saint-François-Xavier didn’t exist in the Middle Ages: it was built by the Jesuits in the 17th century and was dedicated to Saint François Xavier in the beginning, then becoming a parish church dedicated to Saint Paul during the French Revolution. 

Getting around is fairly straightforward, as the neighborhood is very well-connected, with three tram lines running through it, and is roughly 20 minutes walking from the main Gare Saint-Jean train station if you fancy a wander through the neighbouring districts. 

What we did and where we went into

We are walkers, and as long as there is plenty to look at wherever we are walking, we will stay interested. Bordeaux’s centre is full of small plazas with restaurants and bars, and there is plenty of opportunity to sit about in the streets too, overshadowed by ancient churches and houses. As mentioned, we tended to centre ourselves in the Saint Paul district, though we obviously got around a larger part of the city. 

We stayed on the eastern side of the Garonne River, close to the riverside and walking distance from the main city centre, which is a walk, or one tram stop, over Pont de Pierre, the nearest bridge. However, we tended to do most of the exploring on the western side, 

Le Bistro de la Porte, Le Dijeaux

This is a bar-restaurant on the corner of Place Gambetta. Very typically French to my eye, we had a midday coffee, preferring not to get into daytime drinking. 

Hush Hush

We ate in this little French restaurant in Rue Sainte Colombe, with a nice bottle of Bordeaux wine. You can check out their Instagram here, and their Facebook at this link. The street itself is well terraced for outdoor eating and drinking, though we preferred to stay inside with the friendly staff. 

La Cueva

Hush Hush was getting ready to open up for its evening shift, I think around 6:30PM, so we had a beer in the Argentinian bar, next door, again on Rue Sainte Colombe. As we have trouble with French, but we are OK in Spanish, we were comfortable in here, and yes, they do sell beer, with a variety of cocktails. 

Do remember however, that English is fairly commonly spoken in the city too. 

Shops

Bordeaux is home to one of the longest shopping streets in Europe. Rue Sainte-Catherine is commonly described by Bordeaux's official tourism authorities as Europe's longest pedestrian shopping street, though this might be disputed by other cities. 

In any case, we can agree that it is long and what’s more, there are plenty of other shopping streets nearby. After the Lego Shop, we walked along the Rue de la Porte Dijeaux until Place Gambetta, and this has its fair share of retail outlets too. This included Librairie Mollat, a veritable cave of a book store, which you can check out (in French) here. This sits close to the great gate, Porte Dijeaux, an 18th-century monumental city gate, built in the mid-18th Century as part of the city's redevelopment. 

The Lego Shop 

The young fellow likes his Lego, so we managed to get to the shop and get his Lego passport stamped at the shop on Promenade Sainte-Catherin. This is enclosed within a small contemporary-looking commercial area, and coming out of it leads onto more historic-looking streets. 

We’ll leave the Lego writings to the wee fella in his upcoming blogs. 

Difintel Micro

A computer and gaming shop on Rue Judaïque, which is a bit beyond our central stomping ground of Saint Paul, and is close to Place Gambetta. Again, the young fella is a bit of a gamer, so we had to go here in search of various Wii games and paraphernalia, getting some free gifts from the very helpful owners in the process! You can check out their Facebook page here.

Other stuff

Palais des Sports de Bordeaux, the Bordeaux Sports Palace, is another sight to see in the Saint Paul district. It is considerably smaller than the larger stadium outside of town which is used for rugby and football, but still significant for local sports. It is an indoor sports arena, whose main uses are for volleyball and basketball, alongside other indoor sporting competitions, school sport and various other occasional public or sport-related events. It has a maximum capacity of about 2,700 spectators for basketball games.  

Do we recommend and what do we recommend doing in such a short time? 

We tend to look at a lot of things in a small area, so other travellers might be able to see a more expansive area than we normally do. There are enough streets and neighbourhoods to explore in this fine city, and you will find yourself losing yourself for hours among the ancient streets and many shops and bars. The plazas are a lovely addition to relax in and sit around, under the leafy trees and watching life go by, many on foot and a fair amount on bicycle. This central area of the city is fairly flat, so cyclists don’t need too much lower body strength to propel themselves around. 

All in all, you could spend more than two days in Bordeaux, and it could easily end up a major part of a cross-France train trip.