FREE WALKING TOUR (takes you everywhere)

You just arrive at a city that you don't know anything at all.

You don't have people here to show you around or to advice you things to do. You had made so search on the internet but it didn't seem very exciting. That is okay. If you join the free walking tours, you will know parts of the city that aren't in the maps, you will hear stories about culture, but only the interesting parts, and you will find magical places meanwhile.

It was on a Saturday (I didn't have class and I wanted to learn something new). The meeting point was in Pey Berland, next to the tower.

I was so afraid to be late (like I always do) that I arrived very 45 minutes early. As there was nobody, I went to a "boulangerie" and bought a little bread with chocolate (what French people call chocolatine).

I waited until it was time and then we met all together. There was a lot of people (this tour is very well known). There were two guys from Ireland, one girl from Bordeaux and a lot of tourists that were going to be here just for a day or two and wanted to know all about this beautiful city.

After we met each other, we started the trip. This city is known by the nickname sleepy beauty, because there's so much going on, since they decided to control the cars and pollution and started to pay a lot more attention to the environment and to people.

The first place we went was Rue Saint Catherine. It used to be an old cemetery but it is now a square with some coffee shops and benches to sit down. From the old cemetery, there's only one little figure.

Mixed in the city there are many man statues. That bronze statue is a temporary exposition that was built to celebrate the tram line between Paris and Bordeaux that reduces the travel time in 1 or 2 hours, and no one knows if the city is going to buy them.

Next stop was Utopia. It is nowadays a cinema that has cinema sessions in the night and they pass the movies in the language they were made. Some years ago, Utopia was an old church, but then it became a cannery. In this factory the tuna openers that now exist in each cane were make. Until somebody changed it to a profit vintage cinema and a very cozy one with a coffee where you can read the homemade journal about the cinema and city gossips.

The next stop was a green wall in a secret park, I didn't know that such thing could exist. Forgotten by the city population and without a presence in some city map, no one knows it, but they are very nice places to make a picnic or just to relax and read a book.

There we listened to the history of a stolen llama, a symbol of the city and loved by all. That llama was stolen by a group of teenagers that at 5:00 were too drunk to come back home. So on the way, they saw a circus and stole the llama. They put it in the tram and they took him for a ride. In the next day, they were caught because they took too many pictures and it appeared in the journal. For 4 years now he has appeared in a lot of commercials, in the football, the tram, and the police icon.

If we keep walking to the Garonne river, we get to the gate Grosse Cloche.

Some decades ago, the traditional language of the city was Gascon.

In the Middle Ages, the French duke died and her daughter, Aliénor, married a French king. She became a queen but after three months she decided to divorce him. She couldn't, so she discovered that they were cousins and the wedding went off. Then, she married the English king. They were together for 30 years taking care of Bordeaux and so. After, the French fought again and won, building the gate to prevent new attacks.

In the Bordelais culture, the exchanges were and continue to be very important : slaves, weapons, and sugar. To provide and implement the law, during the trades the slaves couldn't put a foot on French flour, that is why they worked inside bars.

The trip has an end in the big square Place des Quinconces (the biggest in France). In this square, there's a fountain similar to the Fontana de Trevi in Rome. The statue is quite big and is formed by two parts. On top, we have a statue of a woman with the symbol of freedom in her hand. In the bottom, we have 3 women that are the symbol of "LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ". It represents the Republic and it was in that square that a man called Guillotin built a guillotine that cut the head of the king some decades ago.

Best trip ever. Now I am going to do the Medieval one, one at night, and the Halloween one, too.