Edit: Updated with some additional photos from my “good” camera”.
This post covers a work trip to Toulouse and a weekend spent exploring in a new city! It’s been a while since I have had an opportunity to check out something new. As I had a weekend before flying back to Charlotte (for a second week of work), I picked Bordeaux as a weekend destination to explore. Time for some wine…
I was headed to France for the first week of my trip. It was with mixed emotions, as my colleague Fabienne was leaving after over 12 years with the company. Fabienne has been a constant source of support, knowledge and friendship in my time at Sierra, and is another tough loss to our team. I have certainly come to rely on her almost constantly. One of my Goals for the trip was to spend this last week with her and try and do a knowledge transfer. What will quickly become apparent is that she has a huge wealth of knowledge in her head that we do not know. I suspect this will be a painful transition.
As you saw previously, I flew directly from New York, heading east while Justine returned home. The good thing about that was it shortened the flight to France a fair bit, which was nice. Sadly, unlike the trip to New York I slipped back into my old habits of not being able to sleep on the flight. My fight took me through Frankfurt, with a decent layover, before heading on to Toulouse.
I had a fantastic seat for the trip – a bulkhead seat with no one sitting beside me. That is unheard of, and all the extra space was a huge luxury. You would have thought it would have made it easier to sleep. Burt no such luck. Instead, I worked through writing some blog posts, doing work, and watching a few shows. The six hours to Frankfurt flew by in no time.
The 2 ½ hours in Frankfurt as a layover was more than enough time for a change. I assume this was because the total number of travelers is still down, or more likely because it was 5:30 a.m. local time, but I breezed through customs, and for whatever reason did not need to go back through security. The gate where our next flight departed from didn’t have a lounge, and I really didn’t feel like going back to the other terminal, so I grabbed some food and just chilled out. The short hop from Frankfurt to Toulouse was uneventful, but still I was unable to sleep.
We got into Toulouse quite early. It was about 9:30 a.m., and by the time my bags arrived, I got into a taxi and headed to the hotel, it was close to 11:00. As expected, my hotel was not going to be ready until about 3:00 p.m., so I had some time to kill. The good news (if you could call it that), was that it was going to force me to stay up all day. The hotel has a decent lobby area with some chairs, sofas, and tables, and I was able to set-up pretty well and get some work done. Having been off on Friday and Monday for the New York trip, I had some catching up to do. I took care of the urgent tasks and made some decent progress.
I was starting to fade a bit, so it was time to head out for a walk. Sadly, the weather for my time in France was not looking good. The raincoat was going to be needed. It was grey and overcast as I headed out, with a plan to grab some lunch and do some wandering. The last time I was in Toulouse (in June, it was a short trip, and I didn’t really have any time in the city itself). There is a great little shop that focuses on locally made olive oil that I have purchased from in the past, and we have been running low on their lemon olive oil, so my goal was to head over there and hopefully they survived the pandemic. It took me a little while to get my bearings as I wandered through town. Much of it was the same, but as many of the streets look similar it took some time to find the right path. I did find it eventually, and happily they were still around (and open). I stocked up for us and was able to cross that task off my “to do” list. From there I just wandered for a bit, enjoying being back in Toulouse and seeing the sites. I grabbed some lunch to take back to the hotel, hoping that maybe my room would be available.
The train station in Toulouse.
Sadly, it was not. Looked like I was in it for the long haul. I had my lunch then got back to work. It was pretty much 3:00 p.m. on the nose when I got into my room. I got set-up and kept working until close to 6:00. Earlier, I had mentioned that we had lost a fair number of people from the team in Toulouse over the past few months. I had arranged to meet one of them for dinner at 7:30 at a local restaurant, and he was going to help keep me up until a proper bedtime!
Francois was a member of our Product Management team, and someone that while I didn’t work closely with, had always really enjoyed spending time with. So, I was very pleased that he was up for meeting me for dinner. He had a young daughter, and I understand that family commitments can make that hard. I very much appreciated him taking the time. We met a restaurant called Mama Shelter (yes, it’s a bit of an odd name…), that I had eaten at before. I needed a drink, and we fell into catching it. I was interested to hear how the new job was going, and he was interested to hear about how the acquisition was impacting people. Thankfully it wasn’t all shop talk, and we got into some great discussions on books, gaming, and all sorts of other topics. It was a really fun evening, and before too long it was 11:00 p.m. and I really needed to get some sleep. But it was mission accomplished and hopefully I had myself onto the right schedule.
The rest of the week was mostly work stuff that I won’t bore you with. Wednesday, we had Fabienne’s farewell party, which was nice, but it was a lot of work and late nights. I was sleeping pretty well, which helped. Friday I was the last one to leave the office (the number of people in the office on Thursday and Friday dropped precipitously), and I took the train back to the city to pick up my back to catch my train to Bordeaux.
One side note – the trains sucked this week. I have been coming to Toulouse for almost 8 years. Every trip I have taken the train from Toulouse out to the office in Labege, a suburb of the city. It’s 10 minutes to walk form the hotel; 10 minutes on the train; then ~15-20 minutes to walk to the office. It costs 5 Euros and I enjoy the “commute”. Normally. This week there was one of the infamous French train strikes that would inflict utter chaos on my commuting. They called the strike to start at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, through 8:00 p.m. Friday. Not a total shutdown, but it’s impossible to know when or if you’d be affected. So it was with great displeasure that I discovered my train home wasn’t coming Wednesday night. Thankfully someone was willing to drop me off at the subway instead, so that worked out. Thursday morning, I was on the train, waiting to leave when I found out it had been cancelled. In all, more than half my trips got cancelled this week. Superfrustrating…
Sorry for the rant, but I do not understand how people in France deal with it.
My train to Bordeaux was scheduled to leave at 7:30 p.m. I was really hoping it was going to be unaffected, as I had no backup plan. I had gotten a notice in the mid-afternoon that the train would be 5 minutes late in departing, so I hoped that was a sign that things would be leaving (mostly) as planned.
It was a bit of an older train, but the seats are big and comfy.
When I realized I had a weekend to play with, I needed a location that wasn’t too far, but was interesting to explore. Bordeaux is about 2-hours from Toulouse on the train, so it fit the bill. I’d meant to try and get there a number of times in the past, but just never have. And you know, wine – so it seemed perfect. I had found a reasonably inexpensive AirB&B and decided to book a full day winery tour (by bicycle) in the old town of Saint-Emilion. It seemed like a good combination, but was going to depend on the weather to cooperate.
I know I’ve said this before, but I love travelling by train. I wish we had better train service in North America, and it’s my preferred option when it’s available. I booked myself a reasonably cheap first-class ticket to ensure I had a good seat and lots of space. The train left pretty much on time – the 5 minutes late as promised – and soon we were zipping along. Sadly, it was dark so I couldn’t watch the countryside go by outside the window. Instead, I sat on our team call for most of it, taking advantage of the Wi-Fi on the train. So that worked out pretty well.
Arriving at the train station in Bordeaux.
The outside of the train station.
We arrived at the station in Bordeaux at ~9:30 p.m., and rather than trying to sort out public transit I booked an Uber to take me to the place I was staying. The one negative about the location was that it was out of the city center a little way. Still, it more than made up for it with the amenities. It was a converted pool house from this awesome, modern home. It had a really nice pool (that I never got to use thanks to the rain – spoilers – but was lovely, nonetheless. The hosts were there to greet me and get me all set-up. It was late, and I had an early start the next day, so I had a beer sitting by the pool and wound down my day.
Opéra National de Bordeaux - Grand-Théâtre
The next day I headed back into the city center to get picked up for the winery tour. Saint-Emilion is a both a small medieval town, as well as one of the appellations of the region near Bordeaux. They also happen to produce some of my favorite wines from the area. I was a bit early getting downtown, so I ordered a bit of food and wandered the city center for a while. What surprised me was how many trees there were, in some areas. That, and how big the river is!
This is what the weather looked like on Saturday morning. A lovely day for a bike ride…
Eventually I got picked up – it was only me and one other person (from Ecuador), plus two others that we were picking up in Saint-Emilion. So, it was going to be a nice, small group. Our guide, Hugo, seemed knowledgeable and personable, and gave us some details on the area as we drove the 45 minutes to Chateau Cote de Baleau in Saint-Emilion, our base for our cycling tour. We did stop in the town itself to pickup our other two group members, a father-daughter pair from France. Everyone was very nice. I’ll just get this part out of the way now, and not whine about it through the whole post. The weather was awful. It rained on an off (mostly on) the whole day, and by the end of it I was soaked. But all of us agreed we’d do the biking, and so we did.
My bike had a lovely basket.
Back to the main plot. We got set-up on bikes, and not surprisingly, the bikes were pretty typical cruiser bikes. Nothing special, but they were fine for what we were doing. We then headed out! He took us though the vineyard, then out onto some of the backroads of the area. It was very easy, pleasant riding for the most part. We rode through vineyards that looked exactly what you are probably picturing in your mind. Old chateaus perched in fields of grapes.
Our first stop was at this new, ultra-modern winery, Château La Dominique designed by Jean Nouvel. He also designed the Louvre Abu Dhabi, among other famous buildings. Here’s some of his very cool work http://www.jeannouvel.com/projets/ It wasn’t open to visitors at that time, but we were able to go up on this huge rooftop deck to take in the views of the countryside.
Chateau Cote de Baleau
From there, we toured around a bit more before heading back to Chateau Cote de Baleau for lunch and our first wine tasting. The woman that hosted us informed us about the ongoing renovations to the chateau (it’s been sitting empty for almost 10 years since they bought the winery in 2013), and they expect that it will take 2 years to complete the renovation.
It’s a beautiful, old, classic styled chateau and will be spectacular when completed. Lunch was underwhelming to say the least, but the wines were really nice. I would have loved to have been able to buy some (they were inexpensive for Bordeaux wines), but the whole import duties and shipping just makes it impractical.
Hard to imagine abandoning this place for over a decade.
After lunch we headed back out and continued riding off in another direction. We once again toured through some vineyards and down winding backroads that were generally car-free. It was such a lovely ride - even considering the rain - and it would be great to come back and do it with nicer weather.
Playing around with some processing. I’m not sure the black and white works for these old gates.
We eventually made our way to a second stop, two vineyards owned by the same family – Chateau Tour Baladoz and Chateau La Croizille.
The two wineries were quite different – Baladoz very traditional, and Croizille very modern. Each were unique and I liked different aspects of the two wineries. It was also quite interesting that the two wineries also have completely separate vineyards. They keep them completely separated, and each manages them as if they are separate. This is important for the classification of their wines.
We got a full tour of both wine making facilities, where they really played up the differences between the two. The thing I found most interesting was that the new, modern winery is considered the “better” of the two, even though it’s the one that they experiment with the most.
The wines at our tasting were quite lovely.
We also did a tasting and had samples from both wineries. The wines were also excellent. From there we were back on the bikes and rode into the town of Saint-Emilion.
While the weather was not pleasant for riding, it did mean that there were very few tourists out and about. Hugo mentioned that Saint-Emilion seeing 1.5 million tourists a year – he makes it sound like summer is not really all that much fun. He took us on a nice walking tour of the town and gave us some history and details on what we were seeing.
We even when into the main cathedral, even though there was a wedding going on! Apparently you know it comes with the territory when you get married in Saint-Emilion! The cloister of the church was especially beautiful.
A view of the town of Saint-Emilion.
A view of our bike rides around Saint-Emilion.
Amazing charcutier board!
Eventually it was time to bike back to Chateau Cote de Baleau to drop off the bikes, get back into the van and head back to Bordeaux. Once back, I wandered the city center for a while. I eventually found a great little café where I had a drink or two and this amazing charcutier board, loaded with meats and cheese. It might be the best one I’ve every had!
Eventually I made my way back to my flat and called it an evening. It had been a long, very full day, and despite the weather I had enjoyed it a lot. The area around Saint-Emilion is unbelievably beautiful, the wine was amazing, and I learned a lot. Probably the most concerning fact was that the harvest this year was almost a month early due to the record heat France had received this summer. The early harvest means smaller grapes and higher alcohol, and they expect that 2022 will be a poor year for wine.
Sunday, I had a full day to explore with my train back to Toulouse scheduled for 6:30 p.m. I wanted to make the most out of the day, so I planned on an early start. Thankfully I woke to blue skies! It wasn’t raining! I checked out and took the bus downtown with my bags. There were lockers at the train station, and so I was able to operate lightly for the day exploring.
I hoped on the tram and headed up to the Citi du Vin, Bordeaux’s #1 attraction. It only seemed fitting that they bult a wine museum. They opened at 10:00, and I was there right for the first opening. It was fairly busy, but not too bad. The building itself is a work of (modern) art, perched on the river. The museum has leaned into being modern – all the exhibits are interactive to the extreme. You get this great audio guide that you activate with sensors, some of which trigger automatically when you enter a room (for example the various theatres playing short film on loops), or that you tap to various exhibits to start the audio and/or video. It’s all very slick and well done.
The exterior of the amazing Citi du Vin.
Its hard to show the interactive exhibits inside the museum, but they were all very interactive and used technology very well.
All-in-all, I spent two hours exploring the museum before heading up to the roof terrace for the complimentary glass of wine (of course). The terrace has an almost 360 degrees, walk around outdoor deck that provides great views of the city from the 8th floor.
The rest of my day was spent exploring the city. I basically walked back along the river front, which is quite lovely. There were a ton of people out walking, running, and biking, enjoying the break from the rain. The first thing I passed was the ultramodern bridge – its actually a lift bridge and allows cruise ships (and not just the small river ships) to dock at the pier. There was one there on Saturday and Sunday.
I made a stop for lunch at one of the riverside restaurants and enjoyed the sunshine. After that, I continued my stroll. There’s a big market set-up along one section, and it was all I could do not to buy meats and cheeses and such – everything looked so good! I did try to buy some fresh oysters, but the line up was huge and eventually I ran out of patience.
Bordeaux Cathedral, officially known as the Primatial Cathedral of St Andrew of Bordeaux. A church of Saint-André was first mentioned in Bordeaux in documents dating from 814.
I spent most of the day just walking and exploring. I’ll put up the map trail and post a bunch of pictures that documents some of the cool things to be seen in Bordeaux. It was two really full days, and I was certainly getting tired by the end of the afternoon on Sunday. My walking turned more to moving from café to café, and eventually I plunked myself down at one across from the train station and called it a day. Bordeaux probably deserved more than 2 days, but I think I saw and did a fair bit. It was a good weekend.
My day walking on Sunday.
The train got out on time and with the earlier timing, I got to watch a bit of the countryside drift by my window. It was close to 9:00 by the time we were back to Toulouse. I wandered down to the hotel and got myself repacked and organized for my flight out the next day.
I’m flying to Charlotte NC for a week of work events, before heading back to Vancouver. It’s not going to be glamorous, so unless something really interesting happens, I don’t expect a post on that one.
One of the cool features on the A350 are a series of external cameras that give you a live feed - very cool during landing!