Visiting Poitiers (France) - the Birthplace of Eleanor of Aquitaine with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Poitiers – the Birthplace of Eleanor of Aquitaine – and Bordeaux (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget – Ruth Pennington Paget

We were up bright and early the second day of our trip to Bordeaux to catch the train for Poitiers, where Eleanor of Aquitaine was born.

Poitiers is also the city where Charles Martel stopped the advance of the Moors into France in 732 – 733.  We visited the church Nôtre Dame la Grande that was built in the 11^th ad 12^th centuries.

Since the French did not have the same colorful marble that Italians did, the French painted their churches in the Charente to make them look elegant and festive with bright colors.

We also visited the Poitiers Cathedral and the Saint-Jean Baptistery from the 4^th century, which is one of the three oldest in the world.

The next day, we ate a late breakfast at the Café du Levant.  The vineyard workers, who ate here, cracked me up; they were drinking beer with an English breakfast of sunny side up eggs, thick-cut bacon, sausage, and toast.  The largest customers of Bordeaux wines are the British, so the Bordeaux wine workers eat like the customers.

The next day we did a walking tour on foot through Bordeaux with a Michelin touring guide after eating breakfast.

On the way home in the car, I noted the things I liked about Bordeaux in my journal:

I like the town houses on the quai (port) des Chartrons, which still houses many wine brokerage houses.  There were steps leading up to these homes to deal with heavy rain. 

There were also iron rings at the base of the steps that were used to tie up horses in the past.  Today, these rings are used to hold flowerpots of geraniums.

People in Bordeaux dressed fashionably, but I suspected that as in Paris many people wore their money on their backs.

We went to the supermarket and bought some not-so-expensive bottles of Graves and Entre-Deux-Mers to go with gambas al ajillo (Spanish garlic shrimp). 

I loved gambas al ajillo (Spanish garlic shrimp) and could make it with no problem very quickly, using fresh or frozen shrimp.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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