Bordeaux is a beautiful historic city in France. As well as great sights, museums, food and wine, Bordeaux is also a great base for day trips around the region. Here’s my ultimate guide to Bordeaux in 5 days without a car.
Bordeaux is one of my favourite places to visit in France. If you’ve got 5 days in Bordeaux, you can enjoy the best of the city as well as some amazing day trips. Enjoying Bordeaux in 5 days without a car is a lovely European city break.
This part of France is famous for its wine, so a trip to Bordeaux has to include some wine tasting. You can also visit a museum all about wine in Bordeaux, as well as a truly impressive digital art museum. Further out from Bordeaux, you can take a wine tasting day trip to the chateaux and vineyards. You can also visit beautiful beaches in Arcachon, and the tallest sand dune in Europe at the Dune du Pilat – all by easy public transport. And the beautiful city of La Rochelle is a direct train ride away. Read my ultimate guide to Bordeaux in 5 days without a car to enjoy this beautiful part of France.
Day 1: Bordeaux’s historic city centre
Spend your first day in Bordeaux exploring the historic city centre. Bordeaux is a really pretty city with lots of stunning architecture, so you can easily spend a full day enjoying the city centre. Most of the top sights are in walking distance in the city centre, but there’s also an excellent tram network as well which is really easy to understand and use. You definitely don’t need a car to explore the centre of Bordeaux.
Grosse Cloche and shopping streets
Start of at Grosse Cloche. This is one of the old gates into the city, and is a really impressive building. It’s a great way to enter the historic city centre.
I enjoyed just wandering through the shopping streets, without looking at a map too much. Rue Saint Catherine is one of the main shopping streets with a lot of chain shops, but also plenty of independent shops and cafes. Some of the smaller streets are really pretty as well, with cafes with seating spilling out onto the pavements.
Bordeaux is also a city of bikes. There are lots of people, especially students, cycling around Bordeaux, which just adds to its charm. In many ways, Bordeaux reminded me of Oxford in the UK. Oxford is also a pretty historic city with golden sandstone buildings, and Oxford also has bikes and cyclists everywhere. I love Oxford, and quickly started to fall in love with Bordeaux as well.
Grand Theatre
The area around the Grand Theatre, the Opera National de Bordeaux, was another favourite area. The buildings here are really impressive, from the grand opera house to the posh Intercontinental hotel opposite.
There are some good shops in this part of the city as well. You can stop off at L’Intendant, one of the (many) famous wine shops in Bordeaux. It’s a great place to browse the vast selection of wine that’s available in this part of France. There are also cheese shops as well, selling a really impressive range of different cheeses.
Bordeaux Canele
Just off the main square is also a small pastry shop called ‘La Toque Cuivrée’. This is one of the places in Bordeaux that sells the famous ‘canele’, a small custard-filled cake. You can buy some and then sit on the steps of the Opera National de Bordeaux to enjoy eating this famous Bordeaux treat.
Place des Quinconces and the Momument Girondines
Continuing to walk north, you soon get to Place des Quinconces, a large open square with the impressive Momument Girondines fountain. This fountain commemorates the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. It’s a beautiful fountain, but also an important reminder of some of France’s turbulent history.
Place de la Bourse and Mirror d’eau
This was my favourite part of Bordeaux: the Place de la Bourse and the Mirror d’eau. It’s one of Bordeaux’s most famous and iconic sights. The curved building of La Bourse is impressive, but what makes this part of Bordeaux really special is the water fountains. Just across the road there’s a large area of water fountains, which acts as a reflecting pool.
The fountains are on a cycle with three different settings. The first setting is ‘mist’, where there’s a really nice water mist. After a few minutes, the mist stops and the water levels rise a bit. This is a great time to paddle in the water, as it’s deep enough to cover your feet. On a sunny day, you’ll find lots of children playing in the water and running through the water. After another few minutes, the next effect is the mirror effect. This is just a very low level of water, but it acts as a perfect mirror for La Bourse behind.
The best time to get the perfect reflection photo is in the mirror phase of the water. But it’s not always easy to get the perfect photo – there will be people stood in the fountains, and also there’s a busy road and tramway in between the water and the buildings. So it can take some patience to try to get the perfect photo! But it’s still a really beautiful area to enjoy.
Place du Parlement
After enjoying the water mirror in Bordeaux, I’d recommend heading back into the city centre and finding a cafe for an afternoon drink. There are lots of pavement cafes and squares with seating that spills out onto the square. So you’ve got lots of choice for places to sit and rest and watch the city go by.
One of my favourite squares in Bordeaux is Place du Parlement. It’s a fairly small square, but it’s really pretty and has some lovely cafes and restaurants around the square. It’s the perfect place to people-watch on a sunny afternoon.
Dinner at Au Bistrot
There are so many great restaurants in Bordeaux. You’ll definitely be spoilt for choice when trying to choose somewhere to have dinner! Bordeaux really is a food-lover’s paradise, with many restaurants serving traditional French cuisine.
My favourite restaurant in Bordeaux is called Au Bistrot. It’s just to the south of the city centre, near the Marche du Capucins. This restaurant stands out because you can sit around a bar and actually watch your food being cooked. There’s a fairly small menu that’s only in French – so take your phone to help translate the menu! But the food is just amazing.
I had the leek starter, which was leeks cooked in a vinagrette with eggs and croutons. It was really nice. The highlight of the meal for me was the main course, which was slow-cooked beef with vegetables. It was just so flavourful.
I was really full by this point, but the food was so good that I wanted to try the desert. I had a delicious creme brulee. And of course, no meal in France is complete without a glass of local red wine. It was truly an amazing meal.
Keep reading on the next page for day 2 in the amazing city of Bordeaux.