Exploring Arcachon: Visiting Bordeaux's Family Vacation Spot with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

  

Exploring Arcachon (France) - 1:  Visiting Bordeaux’s Family Vacation Spot a Second Time with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Laurent and I were going on a weeklong beach vacation in Arcachon outside Bordeaux (France) with baby Florence.  We headed southward out of Paris and waited through the traffic jam to get on the highway to Bordeaux.

Just when we got on the highway, it started to rain.  I made a list of several restaurants by the port that we could try for seafood when we arrived.

The French stay slim by looking for the best “quality-price” value on restaurant meals.  They do not always choose the cheapest restaurant, but they also refuse to be financially exploited by eating at a restaurant that marks up a dish by 15%.

The French read cookbooks and shop themselves to know prices, so they can assess good values on restaurants and food purchases.

We arrived late in Arcachon and started looking for restaurants.  We spent six hours under a downpour from Paris to Arcachon.  Laurent was not too keen on looking at every restaurant on the port.

Almost all the restaurants were closed, but I tried the locked door on the Taverne du Pêcheur anyways.  The owner smiled at us huddling under our umbrellas and opened the door.

“Could we order some sandwiches at this hour?” I asked as I balanced Florence on one arm and the umbrella on the other.

“No sandwiches,” he laughed.

“I only serve full-course meals.  Please sit down,” he said.

We started our meal with a vegetable terrine that had layers of orange, green, and white, puréed vegetables and a cream sauce.

Then, we ate a dozen raw oysters each or “fresh” oysters as the French would say.  The theory goes that you should only eat oysters with months having Rs in them.

Arcachon oysters are famous for their plump light, green flesh.  The ones we ate were clear and not milky for the season.

We drank a wine called “Entre-Deux-Mers” with this meal.  It is named for the peninsula between the Garonne and Dordogne Rivers where the vineyards are for this wine.

We ate simple fish dishes with potatoes following this: Sole meunière for Laurent and grilled sole for me.

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

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Visiting Bordeaux (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Bordeaux (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

Laurent and I planned a trip to Bordeaux over a three-hour meal in a Vietnamese restaurant in the Luxembourg neighborhood of Paris (France). 

We toured the gardens and loved Marie de Medici for creating a park in this spot inspired by the Boboli Gardens at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence (Italy).

We took a week’s vacation to Bordeaux that included a side trip to visit Laurent’s paternal grandmother.  Mamie had just returned from a trip to Algeria with her seniors’ touring group.

She showed me how to eat with the thumb of my right hand and first two fingers of my right hand.  When you eat mechoui, North African roast lamb, you are supposed to use a flat bread to pick up slices of lamb and side salads.

As we walked by the port on the way to eat a seafood platter of raw oysters, mussels, shrimp, and large boiled snails with a bottle of chilled, white Graves from Bordeaux, mamie sort of preached to the choir when she explained why to eat food from all over the world to me.

“Seafood and fish can be unreliable sources of food, so it is good to be able to eat Moroccan food like mechoui and orange and walnut salads,” she said.

She quizzed me about my Bordeaux wine knowledge over lunch.

“Everyone in France has to know how to sell wine to ward off economic depressions and get money to buy food,” she said.

Both Laurent and I want to hone our knowledge of wine in Bordeaux after mamie’s lecture.  There were wine salesmen, caterers, master pastry chefs, and corporate dining room managers in Laurent’s immediate family, so we did know the importance of understanding the food, wine, and restaurant trade and law.

Laurent arrived early on Friday morning from Rouen, where he was finishing up his MBA degree with a rental car for the long trip to Bordeaux.  I had our bags packed, snacks ready, and our lunch sandwiches ready with bottles of water stored in a cooler. 

I put on a floppy, straw hat and sunglasses and felt like a movie star headed to Bordeaux for wine shopping and seafood platter meals.

I wanted to stop at so many places as we sped down the freeway particularly in the Charentes region where I knew there were many Romanesque churches with frenzied façades galore.

We arrived late in Bordeaux and walked from our hotel to the rue Sainte-Catherine and the Porte d’Aquitaine.  We ate dinner in one of the expensive, touristy spots, because we were so tired.

Saturday we started our day with a trip outside Bordeaux to an air base at Merignac.  We went there, because that was where Laurent did his mandatory military service as a teenager.

We then followed National Route 2 along the Gironde Estuary.   We stopped at several châteaux along the way and took pictures of me in front of the vineyards and châteaux.

“Our vacation homes, honey,” I said to Laurent.

We giggled and looked at all the famous châteaux as we drove through the Haut-Médoc.

We then retraced our steps and went to the other side of the Gironde.  We stopped at the resort town of Arcachon to eat a seafood platter.  We sat outside on the terrace and ate.  The salty, sea air made everything taste like we were eating it just caught on a boat.

We ordered an Entre-Deux-Mers, a Bordeaux white, to go with the seafood.  The two seas in the wine’s name refer to the Dordogne River and the Gironde Estuary on either side of the peninsula where the Entre-Deux-Mers winery juts out into the Gironde.

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

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