Stop 4 -Bordeaux

This morning it was good to see the sunshine again.  We are off to Bordeaux today, leaving Brittany behind and entering the wine country. Our first stop this morning was at the lovely 16^th Century Castle of Catherine de Medici, known as Chenonceau Castle. This Castle is surrounded by a moat and is a very attractive Building. It is built on the piers of an old fortified mill. The gardens just off to the side of the Marquis Tower in the forecourt are just so neat and pretty. The Castle contains numerous rooms, around 19 or so…the kitchen being about 4 of these and really well equipped. Apparently there are a few people still living in the Castle..maybe for security reasons, who knows. The Castle was used to house wounded soldiers up to 1918.  All the rooms are elaborately decorated and the tapestries hanging in almost every room are huge and very nicely done.

From here we travelled on towards Bordeaux stopping for lunch at a service centre along the way.  Today’s kilometres travelled were 420, so quite a long day, but as usual, enjoyable.  Arriving in Bordeaux around 4 pm we had time to freshen up before joining our tour director, Marie Clair, for a walking tour around this pretty city which sits on the river Garonne.  Buildings here are quite large and similar to lot of other places we have visited in France. There is a definite style and it’s very nice. The Theatre building and the Baroque Church the most impressive we’ve seen here so far.  Then we had a chance to wander for awhile by ourselves.  Dave and I headed for the water and were pleased to see numbers of children getting wet at a square with water bubbling up out of holes every now and then.  The River is very busy and we could see a couple of River Cruise boats moored there.

We then met up with the group and off we all went to a local Restaurant for dinner, which was quite nice, if a bit unusual in a couple of the courses.  Never the less, everyone enjoyed the time to socialise and get to know each other a little better. Then it was back to the bus and back to the Hotel for an early night. We are actually in Bordeaux for 2 nights, so that will give us all a chance to regroup and repack.  The Kiwi’s are rejoining the tour tonight after Coreen being in Hospital yesterday with Deep Vein Thrombosis.  As they say, another great day seeing interesting things and places. Tomorrow we are on our own for ½ day as some of the group are going out to visit a Sand Dune. We’ve seen enough Sand Dunes at home, so are doing our own thing until around lunchtime when we will go out to visit a Winery.

Chenonceau Castle