Driving west coast of France - Part 5

Bordeaux

Walking towards the city centre, first you can come across the grand monuments of Esplance de quinconces. The plaza is very huge, they say the biggest plaza in Europe. As there are nothing in the plaza, it makes me feel temporary car parking of some big events. However, this statue and fountain are really beautiful and glorious.

Along with Garonne river, you can see plaza of the city council. The buildings of city council have whitish wall and dark greenish blue roof. It is very similar colour nuance of the Parliament house in Paris, very French.
This tri-colour flags suit that building very much.

“Gross Cloche” leads you mediaeval era. As if a knight and a lady come from this tower.

Cathedral Saint-Andre, which is located very centre of the city, is gothic style buildings.
It is enormous.

In the street, a lot of café bar put the table. I went in one of them and had a beer and took a rest. Bordeuax wine is the one should drink after sun goes down, n’est-ce pas?

Driving west coast of France - Part 4

Road to Bordeaux

Friday, after having a meeting with a customer in Nantes, my weekend started!
However, I have to drive back home to Barcelona where 900km far away from here.
It is a little bit tough for the person who does not like driving like me. Therefore, I decided to stay at Bordeaux this night.
The weather was very unstable, once you enjoy agricultural field under the shinning sun, next seconds you cannot see even 30m ahead because of stormy rain like you drop a bucket full of the water.

Anyway, horizontal line is very low and no object to interrupt your eyesight. Fresh green vineyards and golden wheat field continues forever….

The city of Bordeaux, I am confusing a little bit. Is this city touristic or not? Needless to say, this place is world famous for wine production, and if you walk around the city, you can hear many non-French conversations. So everybody tell that Bordeaux is touristic spot.
But on the contrary, I could not find any souvenir shop (Selling junky staff like key-holder, post card and so on) around the city. It is strange…

You know, this trip is not holiday trip, just on the way back to business trip. Therefore, I did not check out where to see, what to eat and so on. In addition, I have poor information about wine.

Then, after checking in the hotel, I was crawling the city with a map hotel gave me in my hand…

Driving west coast of France - Part 3

Abbeye de Villeneuve


In Europe, it is difficult to book the hotel in weekday than weekend. Hotel fee is also more expensive in weekday than in weekend.
Normally, I book a hotel in centre of Nantes city. But this time I could not get it. All Hotels I know were fully booked!


Then I serched through web site and booked a hotel called “Abbeye de Villeneuve” that was located in the small village called Villeneuve.



After completing my work of the day, I drove to that hotel from centre of Nantes. The landscape was changing from that of city centre to that of residence area, then…that of country side, that means I drove through the vast vineyard.
I had a feeling that I was lost.

However, finally I found very small sign of the hotel on a narrow road through vineyard. The car turned into narrower private road from there.
Arriving at the site, I found that the hotel had been converted from monastery as they named.


Only 10km away from the city centre, it looks like the most suitable site to spend the weekend. However, I worried that it was suitable for staying a business person….Do they have internet facility?

Anyway, I checked in the hotel and hotel clerk gave me a very big old-styled key. Oh I felt I slipped to 100 years ago…








Fortunately, the hotel provides wireless LAN system for the guest, thanks god.

This hotel is opened up not only accommodation but also meeting venue for business persons. Many business persons who wear business suites were gathering this place. It surprised me.

There was no choice to have a dinner outside of hotel. I took the dinner in hotel. The hotel offered very nice fish meal with dry white wine (Muscadet).







In addition, they offered real fois-grois! I had tasted canned fois grois several times but this was the first time for me to have real one. The real one is rich in taste and not oily.







That was very good!!

Driving west coast of France - Part 2

Vigneux-de-Bretagne

It has been a long absence since I wrote the part 1…



Vigneux-de-Bretagne is small village in Bretagne.

And it is my favorite place.

The village is located along side of E60 road which runs from Nantes to Saint-Nazaire. It is really small village.

In the centre of the village, there is English style church (It looks like Chapel). And you can find only a café restraint around the church.
This place makes me feel I am in England.
It is not touristic place here, so I guess Asian guy like me is very outstanding if the villagers see me.

But there is nobody in the street.

It is so quiet…