A Day By The Seaside

Last week, we discovered Arcachon, a beautiful seaside village located on a bay.  It is west of Bordeaux and about an hour's ride on the train from Bordeaux.  It was a totally random town and didn’t know what to expect but it turned out to be amazing.  Arcachon is a beach resort, not too touristy, and we were able to relax and enjoy the sun and sand.  The town was centered on the “bassin de arcachon” and overlooked a bay that was fed from the Atlantic Ocean.

We had just missed the last ferry out to Cap Ferret, so we spent the day walking around on the board walk looking at all the beautiful houses, apartments, more architecture, as well as the first French beaches. Well, the first beaches we have seen in Europe really.  They were nice, but South Coast beaches in New South Wales are still much better.

In the evening we were invited to a dinner party along with Steph to her friends' apartment in Arcachon, it was here that we got to taste the most 'cheese-tastic' Camembert fondue.  They basically take the camembert and wrap it in foil and then put it in the oven. You then carefully unwrap and skim off the top hard layer and dig in with small pieces of bread.

Today we returned to Arcachon to see Cap Ferret and the Dune du Plait.  As we exited the train station at Arcachon we realised we were quite hungry so we decided to stop and have a bite to eat.  We were travelling with Floyd, another Australian that we had met from Melbourne who is also staying with Steph in Bordeaux.

After settling on a seafood restaurant, the boys ordered a delicious seafood platter, that was meant for 1 person, but as it turned out it was massive and they couldn't finish all of it together, came close though.

After lunch we caught a ferry across to Cap Ferret. We stepped off the ferry and decided to walk to the other side of Cap Ferret towards the Atlantic.  It took about 15 minutes at a slow pace. When we reached the beach we could see the old WWII embattlements, mostly covered by sand and graffiti.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time to visit the Dune du Plait, but I imagine it's much like Lancelin sand dunes.

WWII Bunkers

Some fishing off the wharf

Us on the Atlantic ocean

Arcachon Town

Arcachon Town

Cap Ferret

Wine & Chateau's in Medoc

Bordered by forests and the grand estuary of the Gironde in Southwest France is one of the world's most revered wine growing regions - The Medoc.

Immaculately groomed vineyards awaited us, steeped in a history of grape cultivation that has led to the production of many vintage red Medoc-Bordeaux wines during the last few centuries. 

We began our tour of Medoc by driving through the small villages and family run chateau's to one of the larger chateau's in which we were lucky enough to have a tour on.  Although the tour was  in French, sometimes it was translated to German or English (basically, when they wanted to tell us - how "much greater" their wine producing methods were in comparison to others).

Unfortunately, we were unable to taste the wine as they only do that on the weekends by appointment, and were there on a Thursday. The chateau was no longer family run, it was owned by 3 corporations, a Japanese company, a German and a French company and no-one lived in this gorgeous chateau either which was a bit sad.  The gardens were beautifully maintained and had a lawn with a view to the river.

Inside the chateau was just as cool, there was the old castle bit - where they keep all the old/vintage bottles of wine - for example, there were wines from 1971 onwards and there were over 5000 bottles in that part. It was interesting to go through a chateau, however the way they produce and make wine are much the same as in Australia.

We followed up our visit to the Medoc by having a picnic lunch by the river.  It was a magical day.

Mint, Horse, and Oysters

We headed off to the L'Apollo Bar for some Jazz but unfortunately missed the band. We still had a rollicking good time with their house DJ spinning some funky tunes accompanied by some random and awesome videos being projected onto the wall (I think one of them was the Nicholas brothers). The photo here is of the barmaid making several of their Mojitos which they prepare with the mint and sugar in the glass first and add the liquid as people order them. The large stack of highball glasses full of mint makes a nice sight on the bar.

We met a few lovely people from Spain and Argentina as we had a few more drinks and enjoyed the music but we were getting quite hungry so we headed off for some food. We were taken to one of the well kept secret of Bordeaux, a late night restaurant. This place opens at 10pm and closes around 4am and serves a variety of food, some regional. I tried to have the horse steak but they were out of the meat and I got something akin to just the meat out of a hamburger (although of much better quality than most) with an egg on top and some freshly cut handmade frites. Sancha took a plunge and tried the duck confit (a bold move for her) which she actually enjoyed. The chef was quite exuberant and seemed to enjoy making fun of our horrible French and our inability to understand him, but his food more than made up for the teasing.

We eventually headed off home and to bed at some point around 3am quite full and a little tipsy from the wine. I think the real winner from our meal was the restaurants dog who got a fair portion of the rare meat from inside my meal.

After a long sleep in the next day we headed back to the same market we got our picnicking food from and chowed down on some seafood. It was pretty fantastic and cheap, only 6€ for half a dozen large oysters and a glass of white wine. I was a little jealous of people getting the seafood platters which looked fantastic and contained prawns, oysters, sea snails and more. Thus fortified we were ready to face the day.

Bonjour Bordeaux!

Breaking the rhythm here and visiting two French towns instead of one. Although we have travelled almost 10 hours on a train, so it's almost a new country. Lille being practically on the border with Belgium, and Bordeaux being towards the south west part of France it's a long way to travel, especially when you have to slum it in second class.

We started this leg off right as well as we met up with (another) Dave and dumped our bags at the train station for the day. This was made rather difficult by us picking the only broken locker there and after the nice lady at the counter came over, tried it, kicked it a bit and set off the alarm, kicked it a bit more, then we just picked a different locker that worked instead.

We took in a fair bit of Bordeaux as we walked around the city and saw many of the sights but I think I'm getting a bit jaded with spectacular churches though, as there are several more that we saw throughout the city. We walked through a fair part of the main city, and saw not one, but two victory arches (think the Arc de Triomphe, but not as large) in the Place de la Victoire and Port de Bourgogne. We eventually ended up looking for a park to sit down and rest in since we had done so much walking and ended up in Jardin Public Park after a few false starts. Unfortunately the maps they give out at the airport don't rate the parks in towns on such factors as "has grass" or "likelihood of getting mugged". Jardin Public however was quite pretty and has such parkey related goodness such as ducks, small children running around, municipal police, people doing tai-chi, and lots of lovely grass for sitting.

We topped the day off with a beer and a visit to a local bar where we were treated to more lovely French cuisine by our French tour guide "par excellence" Steph.

We followed up our visit to the park the next day by heading to the nearby markets where we stocked up on a disgraceful amount of French food for a picnic. As Dave put it, we could have gone in there blindfolded and pointed at things and we would have been fine. Our feast included a pate, some terrine, several other meat dishes including some rabbit and pork, a few baguettes, and several fantastic cheeses. A quick stop at the local supermarket and a few cheap bottles of red wine later we headed off (it's quite hard to find bad wine in Bordeaux, and this was no exception. Our 3€ and 5€ wine was still awesome). We quickly realised that we hadn't brought any cutlery, or even a knife to cut things so we had to stop into a nearby 2€ store and grabbed a knife, a bottle opener and some plastic cups. After a few hours of sitting and eating in the park, followed by some more time sitting and digesting we pronounced our picnic a great success and wandered back home via the river bank of the La Garonne river.

 Bordeaux river bank by night

An old church

What a feast!

The fountain in the Place des Quinconces

Bordeaux isn't lacking for fountains, this one is near Port de Bourgogne

 Surprise! Old buildings in Europe!

A 'Lille' Break

An unusual destination some might say for us to venture to, however the reason for our trip was out of curiosity really &; that a friend of mine is from these parts originally.

We found Lille to be a lovely city with a plethora of cafes/restaurants, boutique shops and few tourists.  There are quite a few beggars on the streets here as well.  They seem to be punks with lots of bored dogs that look ill-treated.  That side of things is a little sad.  There are also a lot of Museums, Parks and again beautiful architecture.  One of the museums we visited was the Musée des Beaux-Arts (the second largest fine arts museum in France after the Louvre).  We were even lucky enough to see an exhibition by Italian artist Paolo Finoglio.  It is the first time that 10 of his monumental paintings have been outside of Italy.  The Museum housed a lot of artwork but my favourites were: a room full of Rubens' paintings, a few Rodin sculptures, a room full of map reliefs and another room full of Delacroix andRomanticism paintings.

We have got to experience some luxuries as well in Lille - some things like having a hot bath and a sauna thanks to our swanky hotel on Rue de la Paris opposite the Opera House. And of course, you can't go to France without gorging yourself on fresh-made baguettes - we were delighted to find a Paul's across the road from where we are staying.

Our trip to Lille has also allowed us to explore Lille's parklands.  Our first day we walked around the city admiring the architecture and the beach volleyball event that was right outside the Museum of Fine Arts; and yesterday we explored Citadelle Parklands and free Zoo. Yes, that's right, a free day out, it was lovely. Pity the weather wasn't better (ie. full of sun).

Our first night here we found a pub called the "Australian Pub", it was just like a faux Irish pub though it had Fosters on tap.  Don't worry we didn't touch it, we opted for another tasty beverage from Belgium. It had great music - but unfortunately there was no Danni Minogue, Ian Moss, Darryl Braithwaite nor Savage Garden.

Tomorrow, we head to Bordeaux for some great company, wine and cheese.

Surrealist Brews

Following on from Maison Antoine we caught the train out to Cantillon - a family run brewery dating back to the 19th century.  To answer your questions - yes, another brewery, this one was different from the rest. The reason being is that they produce a Spontaneous fermentation beer called Lambic and we met the resident cat.

Unfortunately, again we were unable to see the production process as their brewing season is from mid October to the beginning of April.  However, we were able to observe the equipment and have a tour to understand their brewing process and taste some of their tasty beer.

The brewery makes Cantillon Lambic, Geuze and Fruit Beers such as Kriek.  We tried both the Geuze and the Kriek at the Brewery.  They were both quite sour on the palette, but very light and tasty.

After our visit to the Brewery, we returned to town to a small pub called Moeder Lambic (which we happened to stumble upon, with a slogan like "Beer is the Answer", it was hard to pass up), with over 44 beers on tap from microbreweries around Belgium and the Netherlands.  We tried another two tasty beverages here: First, Lambric Cantillon (from the Brewery) we didn't like very much and second, a Valier Blonde described as a Blonde, mild, light beer and it definitely was.

Onto our last day in Brussels another perfect day for the museums...drizzly and overcast.  We grabbed our umbrella and headed to the Rene Margritte Museum.  Part of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium and located on Place Royale the museum is totally dedicated to Margritte.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with René Magritte, he was a Surrealist painter and one of the most famous Belgian painters that I know (along with Van Eyck, Peter Breugal and Rubens).  Margritte's paintings depict everyday objects such as apples, pipes and stones in odd compositions. 

I first saw Margritte's work when I was studying art in highschool.  I loved the clarity of his painting style and odd juxtapositions of images - a real inspiration.  I enjoyed our visit to the museum immensely. 

The audio guide was also very well done and included recordings of the artist, his wife, friends and colleagues and also information on his works that weren't displayed as text next to the artworks like in so many other art galleries and museums.  Interestingly, the audio guide also informed us that Margritte's paintings have inspired others such as pop and conceptual artists such as: The Rolling Stones -their 1970s hit "Angie" was sold in some countries with a cover showing a naked woman posing as a face; The band Oasis made a video featuring men with bowler's hats and umbrellas floating in the sky, and songs by Paul Simon and John Cale.

I also adored the 19th century neo-classical state-of-the-art restored building that the museum is housed in.  After seeing such a large collection (over 200 works consisting of oils on canvas, gouches, drawings, sculptures, advertising posters and photographs) of Margritte's works I came away with a few favourites:

 

Steak, Beer, Art and Mussels. All of These Things Can Be Found In Brussels

Take one blogger, insert in equal parts cheap supermarket beer, surrealist art, streaming music, a rainy afternoon with no sunlight and a free internet connection and you'll get, well to be honest it's like I'm at work again¹.

We kicked off our museum trips in Brussels in the right way by visiting the Belgian Comic Strip Center which to foreigners is probably most easily recognised as the home of Tin Tin and The Smurfs. The French authors Goscinny and Uderzo, creators of Asterix, were also featured briefly here having had some success previously with their series Oumpah-pah, which was published in the Tintin magazine.

We followed this museum visit up with a trip to the Grand Place where our hunger got the best of us and we stopped at an extremely touristy restaurant to dine upon Moules Frites. We kind of regretted this when we ended up with an expensive and average meal as we were too hungry to venture further away from the main area. We eventually corrected this and tracked down a half decent restaurant that served us a much better version of this dish for the same price. Our dessert of chocolate covered strawberries made up for the disappointment though.

The following day we ventured a little out of town to the site of the 1958 Worlds Fair and the Atomium which was built specifically for the fair and is modelled on an iron crystal. The view from the top is rather spectacular as Brussels has very few high rise buildings and you can reputably see as far as Antwerp from the top of the structure.

We also started off our third day in Brussels by visiting Maison Antoine in the Place Jourdan. This place came highly recommended as they do their frites in the Belgian style, twice fried, and the first time in beef fat giving them an extra kick to your arteries. Sitting down at one of the local bars with a cone of frites, several of the many sauces available, and a few beers is a great way to spend lunch.

1 This is stretching the truth, normally I would have had had several more shots by now if I was really at work.