Thursday, April 11th, 2019

Started out tracking down another well recommended coffee place called L’Alchemiste. They did a good job making the coffee, but definitely a bitter blend overall. Then, a zipper had blown out on my REI convertible pants. After a few tries, I found a alteration shop, “Retouche” in French, that was willing to replace it and have it done by Monday. I’m scheduled to head out on Tuesday, so this was critical. The big museum, the Cite de Vin, is out of the downtown area, so I took a tram to it and the Museum card got me in. All kinds of cool tech to talk about the history of wine, but interestingly didn’t seem to have a big Bordeaux focus. Anyway, across the street was an excellent covered market that served all kinds of food, so I dug into that for lunch. A half dozen oysters and then a duck burger with no bun, but it did have a little dab of foie gras. Then I took the bus over to Darwin, the warehouse event space that is kind of the talk of the town. Sort of Burning Man type space. Bus and tram back to the apartment for some down time, and then back out to find a wine bar that got top reviews. Bar a Vin du CIVB The place is in a school for wine, and had some excellent choices although a very French attitude to service. They kept people waiting at the door substantially longer than necessary. Particularly since I was alone and could see there was a seat at the bar, it was frustrating. Then, they refused to serve flights of any sort, so you really couldn’t do a comparative tasting. This was perhaps the one place in France where they pour a big glass, it was good, but one was enough before hunting up dinner. Ended up with a steak frites at Bistro Aurelie, surrounded by French people so at least not a tourist joint. Decent but not great.