Cité de Vin

We had breakfast this morning at a café in the same wee square where we had dinner last night; deux formules petit déjeuner which included orange juice, a baguette with butter and jam, and a large coffee. Energised, we walked into the centre of town and spontaneously decided to go on the tourist bus tour. This turned out to be an excellent decision; we sat on the open air top deck and the tour took us past many of the landmarks that we already knew and also plenty of new ones, with an interesting commentary via headphones. I particularly liked the Mascarons below the upper storey windows on the blond stone buildings, wee carved stone faces, all individual. These used to be meant to ward off evil but later became purely decorative. Lovely. 
The bus also ran up one side of the river from the Pont de Pierre, crossed the modern Pont Jacques Chaban Delmas and came back down the other side of the river, so we saw some of the further out places, including the Cité de Vin, of which more shortly.
We had a light lunch back in the centre of town before strolling to the Musée des Beaux-Arts, a lovely Art Gallery with a few gems. A portrait of a young man, L'Homme à la main sur le cœur, 1632, by Frans Hals stood out for me; his face was so expressive and lifelike. La Danse des Noces by Jan Brueghel de Velours in about 1600 was fascinating; there was so much going on at that wedding! Another one I liked was Ophelia by Jules-Elie Delaunay painted in 1882, she has such a beautiful face. And there were lots more; we both enjoyed our visit and then sat outside in the gorgeous gardens which had an autumnal feel with quite a few crispy golden leaves on the ground. But it was still very hot and there were lots of clusters of pale blue Cape Leadwort flowers on large bushes around the park. 
Our next destination was the Cité de Vin, a large modern museum of wine beside the river. We expertly jumped on a tram to get there. James had some doubts about whether it would be any good or just a tourist trap, but in fact it was fantastic. First we were sent to the extremely comprehensive museum of wine on the second floor, equipped with our audio headphones. It covered absolutely everything about wine, from the locations where the grapes are grown, to the types of grape, the wine-making process, how to quaff one’s wine correctly, and an impressive virtual display about the colours of wine. Then it was time for the real wine tasting on the top floor, where you could take your wine out to a balcony overlooking the city. Our tickets entitled us to a glass of wine each; needless to say this meant that James could choose two! 
Back in the centre of town we had dinner sitting outside at a very busy but friendly restaurant called L’Ombrière, in another pretty square. The only disadvantage was that at some points we were surrounded by smokers! As it got dark the waiters switched on the outside lights and it was all rather beautiful. We passed the big clock tower again in our way back to the hotel, and noticed its sign, translated from the Latin;
J'appelle aux armes
J'annonce les jours
Je donne les heures
Je chasse l'orage
Je sonne les fêtes
Je crie a l’incendie
This particular bell was not the first on the site, it was erected in 1775, and like its predecessors it was the bearer of all good and bad tidings to the people of Bordeaux. 

Bonjour Bordeaux

We got up very early today, at 4.30 a.m. in order to drive through to Edinburgh and catch the 7.20 a.m. flight to Bordeaux. We went to bed fairly early and I got about seven hours sleep so I felt quite perky. All went smoothly and we caught a tram all the way into the centre of Bordeaux and after a bit of footering we successfully caught another tram which stopped just outside our wee hotel near the station. Soon we sallied forth into the very warm streets of the town and we liked what we saw; remnants of the city walls, narrow old streets, lots of cafés and restaurants. We walked to the Cathédrale de Saint André and had lunch sitting outside the delightful Café de France just across the square beside it: the personable waiter very much reminded me of Ragnar from the television series Vikings. With our coffees we were given two little Canelés de Bordeaux which are caramelised fluted cakes with a custard centre - yummy! Then we went in to the cathedral to see the stained glass and statues and paintings, we also looked at the flying buttresses, carvings and gargoyles on the outside - all very impressive although quite a lot has needed to be restored over the centuries so there are older parts and newer parts. In the original cathedral here, my favourite Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, married Louise VII of France when she was only thirteen years old. Off we went again through the hot afternoon to the Musée de Bordeaux which is about the history of the city and its surrounding area. It’s a good museum and we moved chronologically from pre-historic times and cave paintings, through the Roman era to the Medieval city and beyond. There was more to see but we felt sated by history so we headed back to the hotel, purchasing some wine for Jenn and Russ on the way. We decided to have dinner sitting outside one of the small restaurants near our hotel, and it turned out to be really good with a very friendly head waiter who told us that he is from Bangkok and the chef (to whom he introduced us) is from Columbia. We complimented the chef on his delicious food. We stayed sitting under the walnut trees for ages in the warm evening, chatting about all sorts of things. It has been such a good day. 

Degas at the Burrell

I have had a pleasant few days of housework, admin, packing and even a bit of socialising. And spending time with the cats of course. On Saturday I was back in Edinburgh, this time with James, Davie and Chanel, to see John Bishop at the Usher Hall. John Bishop is a Liverpudlian comedian who has been popular on television doing stand up and panel shows for many years, and in his fifties he is still at the top of his game, telling the audience rambling and amusing anecdotes about his life. He is very funny and the audience loved him. We had dinner at One Square, in the Sheraton Hotel, beforehand, mainly because it’s straight across the road from the Usher Hall. We had a good meal and chat with Davie and Chanel. Just as we were leaving the restaurant who came walking out of the hotel but John Bishop himself, he must be staying there. At the end of the evening we got the slow train to Uddingston with Davie and Chanel, who kindly gave us a lift home because their car was at the station. It was a really good evening. 
I visited Carolyn and her wee boys again on Monday; Harris is very sweet and funny and Arran is now ten weeks old, he is so fascinated by his older brother! And I had a very pleasant dinner and chat with Caroline N later on. Today Christine and I went to see the Degas exhibition at the Burrell Collection. We had lunch in the café first. The exhibit was very interesting, Burrell was the first serious collector in Scotland of Degas’ works. There were lots of paintings to look at; I liked the way that Degas captured the natural movement of the figures, especially the ballet dancers. We finished the afternoon back in the café with coffee and cake. 

Lunching

Yesterday I met up with Helen, Wendy, Maggie and Libby for one of our Ladies’ lunches. I so enjoy these meet ups with my school chums; I can hardly believe that we left school forty-five years ago! We sat at our usual table in Zizzi’s and Blanca was our waitress again, she is so pleasant and friendly. We had lots to catch up on; some serious life issues and also lots of good news, and we had an afternoon of chat and laughter. 

It’s nice to be back in Cambuslang and today I enjoyed pottering around the house with the very companionable Tom and Flora, who turned up in every room that I was tidying to see what I was up to! This evening we had a lovely curry and watched more of Vikings. It's holding my attention so far but there are a lot of episodes to go and I think that it moves on to future generations; I might not enjoy it so much without Ragnar, Lagertha, Siggy or Rollo. 

Rebus

Heather and I went to Edinburgh this evening to see a play called “A Game called Malice” which is a murder mystery starring Inspector Rebus. It was written by Ian Rankine, who also wrote the very successful Rebus novels. There have also been two television series about the sardonic Rebus solving crimes around the underworld of Edinburgh. It was at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre, so we had a tasty dinner first at Solti’s which is just round the corner. The tickets said that it started at 7 p.m. but it turned out to be 7.30 so we were very early; we had a coffee and a chat in the theatre café. The play was good; very traditional with a group of characters who are having dinner in a posh Edinburgh house when a body is discovered upstairs. Gray O’Brien played Rebus; I remember him fondly from his days in one of my old favourite series, Peak Practice. He was suitably cynical and intelligent. The rest of the cast were very good too, and I enjoyed it, but the dialogue felt a little stilted from time to time, almost too witty to convey real feelings. It was an entertaining watch though, and afterwards Heather and I took the train back through to Glasgow (Heather got off the train at Croy, where she had left her car.) This is an important week for Heather, she retires on Friday, and we were talking about future plans and holidays. 

End of our summer in Ullapool

Yesterday was our last day in the cottage after a stay of nearly six weeks; Heather and Ewan set off home after breakfast time and we did some laundry and spruced up the cottage ready for our next visit. It felt very autumnal, there were a lot of leaves lying on the path to the bridge. The weather had been absolutely wild during the night; I’m generally a very good sleeper and even I was woken up at one point by the rain battering on the velux windows. We set off homewards just after half past three and were home by 8 p.m. The cats were quite philosophical about being captured and put into their car cage, and the journey went smoothly. We listened to The Rest is History podcast in the car; firstly the very end of the run up to the 1st World War, and then we started the run up to the French Revolution with Marie Antoinette and the Scandal of the Diamond Necklace. Poor old Marie Antoinette, she had nothing to do with the necklace scam and yet somehow she was implicated. 
Back home we put in a washing only to find that the washing machine was broken. My hero James spent hours trying to get different ways to fix it with the help of various YouTube videos, and eventually he found the fault and got it working again. This made us very late to bed and we were exhausted. 

Brambles from Inverlael

Today the weather was forecast to be showery so we went for a walk at Inverlael Forest, thinking that the trees would provide us with some shelter while we took some exercise. It did rain a little bit at the start of the walk but it gradually became drier and turned into a nice sunny day. James, Heather and Ewan gathered brambles for our dessert tonight. In the afternoon we all went for a stroll around the village in the sunshine. We walked round the bull park and through the campsite to West Shore Street and had tea and cake sitting outside Tea by the Sea. We went to both bookshops, and even browsed in a couple of gift shops, before drinks at the Ceilidh Place. We had got a side of hot smoked trout for dinner and served it very simply with baby new potatoes and asparagus, and garlic aioli. Meanwhile James had made apple and bramble crumble with the blackberries from Inverlael Forest and it was very tasty. A relaxing evening of chat and laughter ensued.