Summer 2016

Bordeaux is always beautiful, but it really shines in the summer. The clouds clear up, things dry out and we all remember why we decided to live in this city. This summer was no exception and it was made doubly special by all of our visitors!

Erin and I have been friends since high school and we have always shared the same itch to travel the world. We both spent a summer in Salamanca and when I studied abroad in Seville, I went to meet up with her in Rennes at the end of my semester. She speaks about a million languages and signs, and is just an all around beautiful person. Even though she lived in France for a year, she had never been to Bordeaux and I was thrilled to show her around. We toured the city, I showed her the CEL, and we checked out the brand new Cité du Vin. It was being called "an amusement park of wine" in all the American newspapers but it was more like a really cool interactive museum. We spent several hours there and still had a million more things we could have seen. The free tasting in the top-floor lounge overlooking the city at the end was a nice touch.

The UEFA championship was also going on that year and some of the games were even being played at our new stadium. Normally, I couldn't care less about football, but seeing all the different fans from across the continent descend on the city and NOT tear it apart really renewed my faith in the power of sport. We caught the end of a game in the Fan Zone at Quinconces and being in that environment when France won made you understand how people can get so worked up about their teams. It was infectious.

Erin had to carry on with her adventures and in her place, we got Natalia, Eric and Igor. They come around almost every summer to "give talks" at the LIRYC (and Eric is just along for the ride) but it mostly seems like they're here to enjoy some good wine and the southwest weather. Can you blame them? We were glad to have purchased season tickets to the Cité du Vin since they were interested in checking it out as well. With all that hype, it's hard not to.

Our final visitors of the summer were none other than the Stich cousins! They had mapped out an epic European tour and made the effort to come see us in Bordeaux for a couple of days. It was awesome!

Trying escargot. Delicious!

Their next stop was Barcelona so we tagged along for the ride since neither Jason nor I had ever been there. I had heard some not so positive things about Barcelona (it's big and dirty and a little bit dangerous) so I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually a super great place to be.

We took the chair lift up to the Castell de Montjuic for some amazing views of the city...

Sagrada Familia is still under construction since the 19th century.

...checked out Camp Não, home of FC Barça...

...the site of the 1992 Olympics, and the Palau Nacional. It was a busy first day!

The next day, we wanted to check out Sagrada Familia but couldn't get tickets until the evening so Kyle and Jason too the train out to Monserrat while Ashley, Steven, Jason and I went to the beach. Glorious! We headed back into town to see Gaudi's masterpiece and it was pretty impressive. They are hoping to have it finished by 2026 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of his death. We'll see if that actually happens or not.

The cousins were off to Rome so we had a day with just the two of us before our flight back to Bordeaux so we explored the port and some other monuments around town. There were so many things to see and do. It's definitely a place that warrants more than one trip. We will see you again, Barcelona!