Last night after everyone was asleep I did some research on what else we could / should do whilst in Bordeaux. I found a link to the city pass and actually this one really seems worth it. Lots of museums, a choice of tour (like the little train or open top bus) and free transport. Two activities we were keen to get to today we're the wine museum and to go back to the Bassins des Lumières for their day time show. Just those two activities covered the cost of the ticket so this way we can then add a couple more in too.
Annoyingly you do need to collect them from the tourist office rather than just activate online but we need to be nearby for our first activity anyway. Frustratingly however we do get the wrong location for the tourist office which costs us a bit of time but we did see a couple of things out of the ordinary because of it. Firstly a car had parked up on a one way street opposite the water mirror and some major attractions, it had caused a traffic jam and the local Olympic security, equiped with large guns, were patrolling the area and trying to regain control of the situation, I would hate to be person to have to come back to explain themselves. Then many of the little streets around here have those barriers that retract into the road to allow valid cars to come through, we saw a car drive over one as it then started to come up and took the bottom of the car out! It sounded awful and not sure how much damage it will have caused but I felt bad for the poor driver.
Whilst I was getting the passes Al went next door to get some canele, a specialty cake from Bordeaux.
Our first stop is the Cailhau gate, built between 1493 & 1496 this was the main entrance to the city from the river and it offered a lovely panoramic view of that river.
Afterwards we headed to the cathedral and its tower which offered an even better view across the city at 50m high. As we were there at midday it was great to be able to see the bells ringing too.
Next we went to the CAPC contemporary modern art museum, as I've previously mentioned the kids do love their art so we figured we'd just pop in as its free but we ended up spending a lot longer than planned and there was a really interesting exhibit about Disney. How he used many of the buildings from Europe as his inspiration for many of the princess castles but also I learnt that they produced many posters and videos supporting WW2, getting people to buy bonds, encouraging enrolment and even asking housewifes (using Minnie mouse) to save their used cooking fat to help create explosives. Certainly a different side to the Disney media I've seen before.
The main event in the hall, which was a beautiful space, was extremely random but really excited the kids.
One area for example had some lion statues which were laying down and nearby were some large cocktails, Robert suggested the lions had got drunk and passed out 😂.
Upstairs the kids found an area full of huge cuddly toys and we gave them some time to enjoy and build some dens.
There was an exhibit called stone voids by a female Chinese architect who has based her work on the Longmen grottos in China which is a unique Buddhist complex. The idea is to create a public space within some quarries. Within the art exhibit there are models of the spaces that are being created, I bet they are impressive to see in real life.
The top floor was full of what I would call dubious art work but Liliya saw one piece which was 2 tubes filled with rubbish and out of nowhere after looking at it for a few moments said hmm so rubbish can also be beautiful 😍.
The final room which I did find interesting was a series of dates and historical events listed on the walls then underneath were objects that were from the same decade.
The kids wanted to stay longer and do some drawing so they weren't best pleased to hear off to the art bunker to start with but once there they were loving the fully immersive room that also projected onto the floor and spent most of the hour dancing along.
Annoyingly last night we didn't walk this far round as there are many different spaces to watch the show so today we were armed with the knowledge and went straight there. The two displays are From Vermeer to Van Gogh - the Dutch masters and Mondrian the architect of colours. Both were amazingly done and how they've been transformed into a digital format and set to music is incredible, if you can visit one of their venues (I think there were 7 others worldwide) I would highly recommend it. We were hoping to then see the shorter display in the room called the cube but it was just about to show the one we saw last night and waiting to see the other would have taken another 20 minutes which we didn't have as we had to power through to get to our last stop the cité du vin, wine museum.
Robert was extremely grumpy he'd once again missed the show and I spotted a McDonald's on route as the bus was a 20 minute wait so we decided to walk and offered him a flurry to cheer up. It worked and we ended up with 2 extra drinks and a free ice cream as they screwed up our order not once but twice!
Even though I really dislike wine I had heard that the museum itself was very interactive and had different options for what you wanted to learn about so we chose the junior route for kids that had more of the interactive areas and videos to watch.
By far the kids favourite area was smelling all the different objects that might flavour a wine.
We also watched another art display and learnt about the difference in grapes and wine growing countries.
At the end of the visit we got to go onto the 8th floor for a glass of wine. I asked for their sweetest and was told none today were so instead opted for a fizzy rose (it wasn't my thing at all). Al chose a fruity red which was even worse (for me). The kids definitely won with their organic grape juice, it was so nice we bought a bottle in the gift shop.
Tonight we've got a nearly 2hr drive and it's still too hot to want to cook so we go back to the food market. Al and Liliya choose the same as yesterday whilst Robert went for pizza and I chose some amazing fresh pasta. Robert also got his churros since the machine wasn't working yesterday.
Once again we're opting for the toll road as it saves us around 50 minutes it's awfully painful though as the drive costs €40 because we're 10cm too high and class the same as a bus 😭