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 11th ad 12th
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 4th
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
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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