Category: Nouvelle-Aquitaine

In the inner part of the Bay of Biscay, on the border between France and Spain, lies a sleepy little French-Basque town overlooking the lively Spanish-Basque town of Fuenterrabía/Hondarribia. The city is called Hendaye in French and has just under 20,000 inhabitants. It is located on the right side of the border river Bidassoa.

Here you are in the Basque core area, and around 50% of the population speak Basque or Euskadi, as they call it themselves). So then it’s just a matter of brushing up what you can find of x’s and z’s, and accept not to understand anything at all. Basque language is not related to any other language in the world! (Yes, they have really tried to find similarities, also against Caucasian languages, but no success yet)

As an example, the 80,000 Euskadi speakers in France can enjoy inflecting nouns in the following cases: Absolutive, ergative, dative, possessive genitive, comitative, benefactive, instrumentalis, inessive, allative, ablative, local genitive and partitive.

Time to start practicing: Zorte on! (Good luck!)

In addition to its role as a border town with alternating French-Spanish affiliation, there was a meeting between Hitler and Franco at the railway station in Hendaye the 23^rd of October 1940. Hitler wanted Spain as an Axis contributor, but there was no agreement, and Spain remained out.

Today, tourism is Hendaye’s main industry. There is water! And a splendid beach!

On New Year’s Day 2024, a swim from the large, beautiful beach in Hendaye was just perfect. Here the surfers splash in the water while people go for Sunday walks on the beach – in water and air temperatures like an average Trønder-summer. Adorable!

In Bordeaux, wine has been made for a very, very long time. The first mention of viticulture in this district is from Pliny the Elder, in the year 71 AD. 700 million bottles of Bordeaux wine are produced per year, of which 90% is red wine.

The red Bordeaux wines are blended, the most used grapes are Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot grapes.

The white wines are made from the grapes Sèmillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Sauvignon Gris and Muscadelle. We also got to taste orange wine! The orange color comes by maceration, i.e. the juice (including peel and seeds) is not filtered immediately. This makes a white wine with more taste and aroma, as is a common practice for red wine grapes. In our case it was perhaps mostly interesting. The orange wine we got was not particularly good. But the red wines!

Visits to wine castles are mandatory for Bordeaux holidays. We made it simple and took the bus to Château Pape Clément. A fantastic place!

Surrounded by vineyards, the castle also had an absolutely magnificent garden with many different plant species. Most impressive, however, were the nearly 2,000-year-old olive trees.

Wine exports from Bordeaux were large throughout the Middle Ages (a great deal went to England, under the name Claret). Many of the winemakers were from the bourgeoisie and survived the French Revolution relatively unscathed. Bordeaux, however, was hit by American wine lice and mildew from the 1870’s, and production declined sharply. After the First World War, it has rised again, up in the sky. Quality wines from Bordeaux achieve extreme prices and are considered objects of speculation! However, simpler wines are overproduced, and many wineries are struggling financially.

Before the wine tasting, a bath is a good idea. After wine tasting – no swimming! Swimming and alcohol is not a good match – and we don’t believe that our readers spit out the wine when they are at a wine tasting – do you? We therefore recommend a morning trip with picnic and swimming to ‘Le Lac’ north of Bordeaux center, and wine tasting afterwards.

Take the tram from Place de la Bourse (Stock Exchange Square), and after 20 minutes you are by a very nice lake which is simply called The Lake (Le Lac).

We flinched a bit when we saw this sign – is it really not allowed to swim here after all?

But nope, the sign warns against steep riverbanks and we were going to the beach. At Le Lac you will find the nicest, family-friendly beach you could wish for. Not very crowded either – at Easter time.

It turned out to be a terrific bath. Fresh and nice water, with a temperature like a summer day in Norway. A little too much seagrass in the water, though. We observed a local hero wearing a full wetsuit for the occasion. In our opinion, it was completely unnecessary, with active swimming you could keep warm in April.

After the bath, a pique-nique is just the right thing to do. And yes, we took the trouble to look up the word picnic, since our groups frenchman had some not child friendly interpretations. ‘Pique’ comes from ‘snacking’, while ‘nique’ means ‘of little value’. Food sharing! Considering that this was a family tour, it usually means that Mom and Dad set up a menu and bring it with them. However, we had messed it up with the order that each individual brings what they want themselves (our family consists of various varieties of carnivores, seafood eaters and vegetarians). So then some of us brought food for themselves – as the agreement was, while others had food to share. It’s never easy! But a good and cozy event, it was.

It’s just right to share food and have a bath at Le Lac. This time a claim that has been tested – and verified – by 4 youngsters.

Bourdeaux is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, and has over a million inhabitants, if you include the suburbs. The name comes from ‘border’ and ‘eau’ = water, ie the border of the water. And if you have a somewhat wider perspective, this is actually a port city, even though it is located as much as 100 km from the coast. La Garonne is navigable all the way up, and there are 9 km of quays along the river.

In the Middle Ages, there was a large slum in Bordeaux. To make the city presentable for the foreign wine traders, it was decided to create ‘Port de la Lune’ = Port of the Moon; large, beautiful buildings facing the harbor – with the slums neatly hidden behind. Clever! The area is inscribed at UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Bordeaux is an ancient city, from pre-roman times, originally Celtic. The region for a long time was subject to England, e.g. during the Hundred Years’ Wars, but there are not many traces of this in the center of Bordeaux today.

There are many magnificent churches in Bordeaux, the city has been an archbishop’s seat since 300 AD. After spending an entire morning trying to find the St. Peter’s Church (and the rest of the company), Idun had to admit that the beautiful church she was looking for was the Cathédrale Saint-André de Bordeaux, and not the Eglise Saint-Pierre. The cathedral was consecrated by Pope Urban II in 1096. He helt a speech here to collect support for the first crusade. But even though St. Andrew’s Cathedral is great, we think that the bell tower’s 20th century statue of The Holy Mother was too much for our taste.

After the city walk, a bath is just the right thing to do, but we really would not recommend La Garonne. And not because of this sign!

Swimming can be dangerous if you can’t swim, yes, we definitely knew that already. The problem was the water in the river. In La Garonne we found the brownest water we have seen in a long time. Mud bath, it was!

We have heard that mud baths are healthy, but think maybe not this kind. Alternatives had to be found, and that was super easy in Bordeaux. We recommend a foot bath in front of La Bourse!

‘Bourse’ = Stock exchange. The bathtub is called “Miroir d’eau” = the Water mirror, and we were not the only adult bathers here, just almost… Since we couldn’t do a full entry, we also dropped the full undressing. Kids and dogs enjoyed the almost 4000 Sq mt of water, and a couple of youngsters actually did surfing! With a water depth of 2 cm – well done! The water depth changes in cycles. If the water disappears – just wait a few minutes, and it will return. A bath in Miroir d’eau is just right!

After the bath, some food is just right. In Bordeaux you will find typical French cafès and restaurants, as well as many more or less Italian varieties. Idun was very excited about the cheese and ham plates, preferably mixed. Knut is very fond of seafood, and often ordered seafood platter. These have a somewhat wider selection of species than the similar Norwegian dishes, as periwinkles and common whelk are common ingredients. Our eldest daughter Ulvhild, who is otherwise very enthusiastic about mussels (e.g. Moules-frites or Spaghetti Vongole), was somewhat doubtful, but wanted to try. Then it turned out that actually pulling the animals out of their houses was too much for the youths. Maybe it’s better with a bloody steak?

… which made a kind of puzzle for us: Isn’t seafood in Bordeaux just right?