We LOVE Bordeaux!

This is the last of our 3 nights in Bordeaux and we have to say that we LOVE this city and area. While Bordeaux is a name that everyone recognizes and knows it has not yet caught on as a hotbed of travel. From what we learned yesterday, the city has undergone an extensive refurbishment in the last few years (something that could have taken 20 years but they opted for a few years of hell to get it done) and boy has it paid off. The waterfront is beautiful to walk along, there is great shopping, great restaurants, and at this point few North Americans (perfect!). While we came here for the wine (and a little surprise engagement), we have really fallen in love with the city as well.

Last night we went for dinner at La Tupina for our engagement dinner, which Dewey told us yesterday had been voted the #2 Brasserie in Europe. Now, any restaurant in France that has been voted #1, #2, #3, blah, blah, blah... means nothing more to me personally than a red flag. What is does guarantee is that there will be nothing on the menu I will eat. However, we checked out the website, saw some poulet on the menu, and made a reservation. The place was a bit off the beaten track but very nice, and the waiter accommodated us by speaking English so we were more than happy. We ordered the poulet, no stress.

The meal was actually quite tasty but here's how it went:

Surprise, amuse bouche, "Enjoy, I will tell you what it is when you are done"....now, that just sounds like trouble.

It smelled like fatty fried pork chops (YUM!!) so I had a piece, and it ended up being quite tasty -- like a pork chop really, but that tubular piece at the end of the plate freaked me out and I couldn't eat more. Turns out it was pork tripe, I did not know exactly what tripe was but I knew it was icky in my head. Jess refused to touch it and was happy he didn't when he got home and Googled it (pork stomach).

Our chiken came with 'frites' that were cooked in duck fat. Now why would you do that?? Do they not have partial hydrogenated oil in France.
Jess, of course, got the breast because he hates any kind of fat or skin. The chicken leg I ordered was the largest I had ever seen, with ligaments and tendon galore. I swear this poor bird had lived his life off and on a treadmill. Again, tasty but not what I am used to.

Jess on the other hand was relishing the fact he had a ring on his finger and had suddenly developed a love of butter I had never seen before. Marathon running, be damned!

Today we headed out to St. Emilion which is 45 minutes from here and another famous area for Bordeaux wine (more Merlot, if you care... Dalyn. Kind of like Sola, only different). The area was absolutely beautiful, more hills and valleys than Le Medoc yesterday. We did one tasting in the morning at Chateau Fonplegade, toured the town and had a nice lunch. Temperatures here have gone through the roof, 36C (97 F) .... so blogging in a room with airconditioning isn't so bad right now.
Tomorrow we are driving to Nice. This is the longest driving leg of our trip so we plan to head out early. While you guys in Vancouver are putting your heads down to sleep tonight we will be putting the petal to the medal.

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Still one more nice evening in Bordeaux though, we are thinking Italian again, so comfortable and another trip down to the cellar to pick out a bottle of wine.