Diana and Brian's Holidays: Bordeaux on the barge Rosa

We were off to Bordeaux to spend a week aboard the barge Rosa on the Canal de Garonne. We were last aboard Rosa some 8 years ago when we did the South end of the canal, this year we are doing the southern half. We were flying from Gatwick with Easy Jet so spent the night before at Holiday Inn leaving our car in their carpark for the week and took the shuttle bus to the airport. I must say it worked well and pre booking an evening meal turned out to be a very good idea and good value for money.
We arrived at Gatwick in good time at the North Terminal and went straight to the bag drop to join the queue, then for some lunch before going through security . Our flight was delayed and we spent some time sat in the departure lounge, the delay got a bit longer as they had to put on a new crew before we boarded. Loaded and seated ready to go another delay, a plane coming in with faulty landing gear so the runways cleared, probably a 2 hour delay due to rearranging take off slots, but they gave us a complementary glass of water. In the end it was only an hours wait and a smooth flight to Bordeaux.
Once in France it was the shuttle bus into town, the bus stop straight across the road from the Citotel Régina, our hotel for the night. we had a good view from our bedroom out across the roofs looking out over the city.

Due to our delayed flight and the hour difference in time by now it was early evening so the main task was finding somewhere good to eat, not a difficult job in Bordeaux. We ended up eating outside about 250M from our hotel

As I said the hotel was directly opposite the railway station.

That night just after we had got back to out hotel room we had a horrendous thunder storm.

The hotel did breakfast from 5 until 9 and checkout at 10 am. so no chance of a lay in. We left our bags with the hotel and headed for town walking along the river. This area is undergoing a lot of restoration work with many empty buildings.The river has several crossings but this bridge is the end of navigation for large ships like the cruise liners that now visit the town.

The first place we visited was one of the restored gate towers, Porte Cailhau. This was one of the town gates which was closed at night to make the town secure and was built in 1494. There is normally a charge to go in museums in France, but the first Sunday of the month most are free.

We wandered along and visited the cathedral passing a street that was shaded by umbrellas, we last saw this in Spain.

Across the road from the Place de la Bourse they have laid a large pool known as the Miroir d’eau. It covers an area of 3450² M and consists of 2cm water over granite slabs this give a mirror surface if you can catch it while the kids are not playing in it. Every 15 minutes the water drains away,and mist forms before the water returns.

We visited the Saint-André cathedral so of course we had to climb the 229 steps of the Pey-Berland Tower to get a view over the city.

Inside the cathedral was just as grand

One thing we often do when visiting a city is to take the road train that most of them have now. We turned up at the terminus only to be told by the driver we needed tickets from the tourist office, he assured us we would have time to get there and back before he left. One advantage of the mini train is they go through lots of semi pedestrianised small streets so you see things you wouldn’t see from a bus, so some of the photos are taken from the mini train and some as we walked around the city’

We have no idea why this long queue had formed outside this restaurant, it must be something really special.

We sat in the café on the corner waiting for Julian to arrive to pick us up in the side street and when he arrived we were please to see there was only one other couple, so the four of us had the boat to ourselves, a real bonus especially as we had a 90K ride to the boat

Once at the boat there was a short introduction, we had all experienced barge holiday in the past so it didn’t take too long and there was time to wander down to the end of the marina to the lock before dinner. Here some people were picnicking while others were enjoying a game of Pétanque, there were some youngsters playing a similar game but it looked as if they were using small discs or flat stones

The reflections down the canal were nice but unfortunately I spotted a mattress floating along.

We walked back to the boat to change for dinner, or first meal on board and Mike the chef didn’t disappoint us, including the cheese there were four courses served with 3 wines.

Its 8 years since we last were on Rosa and she still looks in tip top condition with a few minor tweaks, LED lighting in the cabins, auto lighting in the bathrooms, new switches and socket plus USB outlets. No longer do you get a bottle of water to take out, but to reduce plastic waste every guest is given a stainless steel water bottle with their name on it and there is a chilled/filtered water station to fill it up. Probably saves 80 to 100 plastic bottles a week.