Bordeaux’s Downtown Beckons

Bordeaux is the 9th largest city in France, but definitely ranks higher in fanciness. The downtown area is large and grand, filled with ornate buildings and extravagant fountains. There are several massive cathedrals and a nice art museum. Everywhere has an upscale feeling. Even the thrift stores are sophisticated. Bordeaux offsets its urbanity with access to multiple large parks and a popular riverwalk as well. But the city’s best feature is definitely its large downtown area. 

It seems like all French cities have a nice downtown, but Bordeaux is the most sizable we’ve found. The bigger cities like Paris and Lyon have plenty of nice pedestrian friendly places, but those spaces are clustered throughout and not necessarily packed together. In Bordeaux, they concentrate all of the car-free space into the large downtown area. Aside from an occasional delivery van, there are no cars anywhere making it a wonderful place to walk around.

To enter this area, many walking routes pass through ancient gates of the old city walls. Today the walls are gone, but strolling under a massive archway still makes a statement. It seems to announce to every passerby that within is a special place to slow down and enjoy. 

We spent a lot of time exploring all of the streets throughout the downtown area, where we found plenty of restaurants, cafes, and ice cream shops. There were book sellers, art galleries, wine shops, and specialty chocolatiers too. Fashion is a big deal here and there are gobs of apparel shops for clothes and shoes, both new and used. It’s an area made for shopping, dining, and socializing. 

Cathédrale-Primatiale Saint-André

The main cathedral in town is dedicated to Saint Andrew. Officially titled the Primatial Cathedral of St Andrew of Bordeaux, it’s known more commonly as the Bordeaux Cathedral and has been a worship building since the year 814. The structure has been rebuilt a couple of times since then, with the current architecture designed and built in the 14th and 15th centuries. It’s a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site for its inclusion as a stop on the route of the pilgrimage trail to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. The inside feels huge and spacious due to its very high ceilings with no center support columns.

Basilique Saint-Michel

This smaller church is also a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site for the same reason as the Bordeaux Cathedral. The Basilica Saint Michael has intricate gothic architecture on the outside and some really impressive stained glass inside. But unlike most of the churches we’ve visited in Europe, the stained glass felt more modern and almost oil painting-like. The colors were vibrant and the scenes more varied than the typical religious stories. It also seemed like different artists made each panel, adding to the variety.

Musée des Beaux-Arts

The Fine Arts Museum is a nice art gallery separated into two smaller sections. The first has older classical paintings by masters such as Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel. Section two is across the courtyard and has a couple of great marble statues and more recent art from artists such as Mary Cassatt, Henri Matisse, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The highlight for me was the incredible detail on the marble carving by Italian sculptor Rinaldo Carnielo titled Dying Mozart.

River Promenade

At the eastern edge of downtown along the Garonne River is a wide promenade. It’s very popular with bikers, runners, and walkers. Next to this broad paved path is a series of grassy areas with flowers and plants. Locals use this space for picnics and sunbathing.

Pont Jacque Chaban-Delmas

Following the river promenade to the north, we came across the Jacques Chaban-Delmas Bridge, which is the longest vertical-lift bridge in Europe. I don’t remember ever seeing a vertical-lift bridge in person before, so it piqued my interest. We found a schedule online which allowed us to time a visit to see the bridge in its raised state. It was pretty unique. 

Sadly, the bridge exists solely for allowing cruise ships into and out of downtown. That’s as far as the ships can go too, as the 2000 year old Pont de Pierre (Stone Bridge) is just a mile further down the river. No large ship is getting past that one. The closer you get to the vertical-lift bridge, the more it feels like a tourist trap, almost certainly because of the cruise ship influence. So while I found the bridge worth seeing, we didn’t want to spend much time in that area of the riverfront. 

Submarine Base

Further north out of downtown Bordeaux on the edge of the harbor is a remnant of World War II. One of the least fancy parts of the city, the BETASOM Submarine Base is a large concrete building that was used to build and repair submarines. The twist here is that it was an installation built in 1940 by the Italian Royal Navy inside of the German Occupation Zone. It was used by the Axis in the Battle of the Atlantic with a goal of disrupting Allied shipping lanes. It sits on the edge of the harbor and despite its disuse, still has a fair bit of security around it. 

Jardin Public

Of the three major parks in the city, the Public Garden is the only one right on the edge of downtown. It’s popular all the time, but on the weekends it’s absolutely teeming with groups having picnics and enjoying the outdoors. There’s a small botanical garden alongside the grassy areas. It also has ponds popular with the ducks and geese, which made them popular with us because of ducklings. We chuckled at so many little brown and yellow puff balls trying to get their bearings in this world, including one that must’ve just recently figured out that he could go backwards and was very excited to show it off. 

Parc Bordelais and Parc de Bourran

We also spent time welcoming spring at two other large parks which were a few miles outside of downtown. These had more space and were more wild than the Jardin Public, although they each had some paved paths. Both were good spots for bird watching along with ponds that attracted ducks and geese. The Parc de Bourran has an old chateau overlooking its lake but overall is a little more rustic. Slightly more upscale was the Parc Bordelais, which had a mixture of paved and dirt paths and more planted arrangements. Both were sizable compared to the others that we found.

Palais Gallien

I love wandering through the streets and finding random history. It’s one of my favorite parts of European travel. In this case, we randomly stumbled upon 1800 year old ruins of a partial Roman amphitheater still standing in the middle of a neighborhood. I’m sure some of the stone went to build the surrounding houses, but enough was preserved to make for a quick but interesting stop.

Where We Stayed

We rented a simple one bedroom apartment in a great location about 10 minutes west of downtown. The apartment was clean and uncluttered, but of course the trade off of that is that it didn’t feel very homey. The proximity to downtown was the best feature. It cost us $1756 for our 4 week stay and was a perfectly adequate place to stay in Bordeaux.

What We Spent

Despite all the city’s fanciness, our stay in Bordeaux was reasonably priced. We did a fair amount of thrift store shopping to help update our wardrobe for the upcoming warmer months. But otherwise we mostly entertained ourselves by walking around the downtown or the large parks. Our total spending in Bordeaux came out to $2847. Adding in our regular bills for mail service and TV streaming, the grand total for our 28 night stay was $3087, or about $110/day.

Bordeaux has a wonderful downtown area with a fancy feeling that pervades throughout. There’s a wide range of things to see from contemporary fashion trends to historical architecture. Our early spring visit was greeted with lots of flowers planted along the promenade and in the parks. Wisteria was in bloom everywhere and we found plenty of tiny ducklings for some wholesome entertainment. Overall we found it to be a very nice city and a great place to wander around.