10/18
We woke up in the village of Bourg today. There was a brief guided tour of the town which we elected to miss and take a later walk on our own. There was structure that had been a citadel that is now a park and there is also a public building on the land.
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| Entrance to town |
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| Citadel |
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| View of town from shore |
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| Park |
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| The gate Patty elected to check out. |
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| Park |
We started off with Ira and Patty then Patty decided to go one direction while we three went another and we didn't see Patty again until we went back to the ship. In the meantime, we had a very nice walk around the old citadel and back along the river.
Once we met back up with Patty, she and I decided to go into the town for some shopping. There is a story that the young King Louis XIV was in the garden trying to reach a fig on the tree. A passing monk lifted him to allow him to reach the fig. The monk was arrested because it was illegal to touch a royal family member. He was soon pardoned by the king's mother. The story inspired the creation of a candy made of crystallized fig surrounded by white chocolate, fig liqueur and marzipan shaped and colored to look like a fig. Quite delicious!! I didn't succumb to buying them until later in the day when we were shopping in the next town.
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| The special fig candy |
On the way back we saw some young teenage boys riding bikes and kind of showing off right at the dock area. I noticed they had set up soft drinks and snacks for sale on a picnic table near by and struck up a conversation with one of them who spoke minimal English.
They tried earnestly to sell us snacks or drinks which we turned down but I asked if I could take their picture and then they shook me down for a Euro. Actually, they tried to get me to give each of them a Euro, the little delinquents!
After lunch the ship moved down the river to Blaye. Along the way, we saw many of the "fishing shacks" typical of the area. They are small houses on stilts that sit right at the edge of the river. The tidal shift in the river is as much as 16 feet so the stilts are absolutely necessary
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| Viewed from the road |
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| Many of the fish shacks have a large net on them. Not sure how they are used. |
In Blaye, we went on a guided tour of the town and specifically the 17th century large citadel built as a defense of the town because of its vulnerability at the large estuary of the Gironde River. As it turned out, the town was never attacked after the citadel was built. it's a massive structure with multiple levels of defense that now is totally incorporated into the town and used for lots of community functions.
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| A street within the citadel |
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| Listening to the guide in the main place of the citadel |
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| Taken from internet to show the massive size of the citadel |
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| From internet |
There is a modern town on the other side of the estuary that we didn't manage to visit but Patty and I stayed behind in the citadel to check out the tourist shops.
We returned to the boat for a couple of hours of relaxation before dinner.
Once we met back up with Patty, she and I decided to go into the town for some shopping. There is a story that the young King Louis XIV was in the garden trying to reach a fig on the tree. A passing monk lifted him to allow him to reach the fig. The monk was arrested because it was illegal to touch a royal family member. He was soon pardoned by the king's mother. The story inspired the creation of a candy made of crystallized fig surrounded by white chocolate, fig liqueur and marzipan shaped and colored to look like a fig. Quite delicious!! I didn't succumb to buying them until later in the day when we were shopping in the next town.
They tried earnestly to sell us snacks or drinks which we turned down but I asked if I could take their picture and then they shook me down for a Euro. Actually, they tried to get me to give each of them a Euro, the little delinquents!
In Blaye, we went on a guided tour of the town and specifically the 17th century large citadel built as a defense of the town because of its vulnerability at the large estuary of the Gironde River. As it turned out, the town was never attacked after the citadel was built. it's a massive structure with multiple levels of defense that now is totally incorporated into the town and used for lots of community functions.
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