June 2 – Bordeaux, France

Weather – 21º, started with a downpour,

90K upstream

luckily, we were still on the ship eating breakfast inside the cozy ship

Steps – 12,720

Humidity – low%

Bordeaux (pop.1.4 million) is a repeat port for us. It is on the Goronne River, about 90K upstream from the Atlantic Ocean. We entered the estuary at around 4AM and were docked in Bordeaux by 10. The sail in was very different and interesting compared to sailing on the open ocean – more like being on a river cruise, with land on either side of us and passing other ships (some passenger, some cargo) close to us.

The river looks dirty, but it isn’t. It looks brown because the salty water from the Atlantic is mixing with the fresh water from the river. The salty water is heavier than fresh so sinks to the bottom and stirs up sediment to make it dirty

going under the bridge

There is a vertical lift bridge over the Garonne River that we had to pass under. This 110m long bridge was raised to its height of 55m for us to

bridge going down

pass. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another vertical lift bridge – very cool. We passed under this at about 830, we considered going onto the bow of the ship to watch the coming in, but we had a perfectly fine view from our room where we watched the events from our Juliet balcony.

Speaking of our balcony…this ship has no true balconies. Actually, I think there are 2 super fancy-schmancy rooms that have true balconies, but for the most

good morning Bordeaux

part, rooms either have port holes, large windows, or Juliet balconies. When we booked this, knowing nothing about Windstar, we flip-flopped between a

Place de la boursse

balcony or no balcony…we made the right choice, despite the higher price. Even though we can’t fit a chair to sit on out there, we can stand and can move chairs close enough to sit and enjoy the outside world. This has made us realize how much we value a balcony and will continue to be hard pressed to go without a balcony.

Today we have NO PLANS. There is a loose plan of wine, walking, and tea towel (or torchon or serviette a café) shopping. We accomplished 2 of 3. For some

church, wine, and olives

reason we were unable to find anywhere to buy the tea towels I bought the last time we were here. I’ll do some more research back at the ship and as we are still here tomorrow…maybe??

We wandered and said to each other numerous times…remember that?

random, cool thing

We eventually found a square that looked perfect for a Bordeaux rosé wine and olives while booking a walking tour on our phones for tomorrow. As it turned out, the walking tour meeting place was exactly where we were drinking wine!

Of course, after we left our wine drinking table under cover the rain came…hard, for about 5 minutes. Luckily, we found a doorway to wait out the rain.

Then we looked and looked for the Bordeaux linens store …nope…shouldn’t be that hard, last time we just stumbled upon somewhere to buy when I wasn’t even looking…maybe that’s why.

One the way back we found a Carrefour in search of compté chips. Having been all around the world, looking for weird and wild chip flavours, compté are my all-

not too bad

time favourites. We can now find these in Calgary, so finding them abroad isn’t such as discovery, but they are delicious. Today the closest we could find were “Raclette”…fine, but not nearly as good.

Back at the ship, we grabbed a drink to accompany the Raclette – the drink of the day was a Champagne cocktail. This is well done. Windstar doesn’t seem to make any drinks overly sweet…this one was perfect. Regent will use sweet&sour mix for margaritas and French 75s or basically

our set up

anything that calls for citrus juice. In my opinion, that is super cheap – I’m perfectly happy with bottled juice rather than fresh squeezed at home, but at a bar on a cruise ship, or in a hotel, or a restaurant, or an actual bar and I’m being charged through the nose…it should be fresh. Anyway…Windstar uses nothing but fresh. In fact, we ran into Eugene one of the bartenders in town today, buying a new juicer, because their last one died.

French show

We enjoyed the chips, and the cocktail with our chairs pulled up to the Juliet balcony. As soon as we opened the curtains, we realized it was low tide…this morning it was high tide and the land outside our room was about 10 feet down, now it is about eye level.

Tonight’s trivia was 80s Name That Tune, so…I had to forego the nap to try to win! And win we did!! Most of the songs were pretty easy, but some were tough and Sin, the entertainment manager only played a snippet of each. The one that we couldn’t quite get was 99 Red Balloons – Chris finally got that one.

outside our room at night

We won! 41 out of a total 43 points. We clearly missed Material Girl, when we wrote Like a Virgin, but we missed the ‘baby’ off the end of Don’t You Want Me Baby” – felt like we should get part marks for that one, but it didn’t matter, no one was close to 41. We won some very spiffy Windstar luggage tags!

We met up with a couple from Australia, who we met at trivia for dinner. Kim was

winner, winner

convinced she would be the winner against all of the oldies who usually turned up for trivia…then we walked in and…sorry Kim. She and her husband were fun to have dinner with.

tying up, right outside our room

Tonight’s show was “French Can-Can” and it was BRUTAL!  I don’t even know what it had to do with France. There was some French music, but they also sang Michael Bublé and New York, New York and they weren’t great. I appreciate the effort, but I blame the cruise…not the performers who did their best, but their best wasn’t great.