Day off excursions

Monday was a pleasant day so we made a couple of excursions. The first was to Lidl to stock up on essentials. While we were there we saw that they had what they called barbary figs - prickly pear fruit - so we bought a pack of six and we've enjoyed them very much.

The afternoon took us to the centre of Bordeaux where we called in at the new Uniqlo store. Uniqlo is a Japanese brand of mail order clothing and they now have eleven shops in France, the most recent being in Bordeaux. I think the brand will do well as they have just the right colour palette for the city - a range of black, navy blue, various greys and different shades of beige. Their clothes are ... reasonably priced ... and generally fairly conservative in design, though they do have some oddities. I was intrigued by a blazer which, when you got near enough to look was not tailored but knitted. They also had good coats - not cheap but they looked the kind of coat that you would wear for ever.

Pat didn't buy anything but I have been running short of socks so I got a set of six in various shades of grey, navy blue and beige.

Afterwards we went into the Desigual shop, just up the road, which is probably at the other end of the colour palette. I often call in there on grey days to brighten myself up.

Later on we took a stroll round the vines to our neighbours at Château Pape Clément and called into their Wine Shop Experience. They sell wines from the Château at around 125€ - 500€ a bottle, depending on the year, but they also sell wines from Bernard Magrez' holiness all over the world, from other parts of France as well as Bulgaria, Chile, etc. and some fo the wines are less than 5€ a bottle. 

Next door to the Wine Shop Experience is a wine bar where you can sample different wines, buy a coffee or at lunchtime get a light tapas-style lunch. It looks very posh but the prices are quite normal.

I asked the chappie in the Wine Shop Experience which parts of the château people could wander round, and he said that there's free access to all parts of the parks and gardens - you can just roam at will among the very old olives etc.

"But the people who walk their dogs in the vineyards?"

"Oh no, you don't have the right to walk your dog in the vineyard! People can wander round the park but not the vineyard."