France

Restaurant Review: Le Restaurant Bar Andre. Fresh Seafood in La Rochelle, France.

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Le Restaurant Bar Andre is most certainly the most famous restaurant in La Rochelle, France (if you are unfamiliar with La Rochelle, read about it here). Restaurant Andre is located right in the heart of La Rochelle, in its Vieux Port just below La Rochelle’s iconic towers. Restaurant Andre has been open since 1947 and now occupies a web of dining rooms, each with a slightly different sea theme. Restaurant Andre is an excellent place to try some of La Rochelle’s fresh seafood and a place to check off your La Rochelle bucket list!

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La Rochelle’s famous towers!

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La Cite du Vin: The Most Magical Wine Museum in Bordeaux!

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La Cité du Vin opened on June 1, 2016 and I visited a few short weeks thereafter after drooling over Bordeaux’s “wine amusement park” on Condé Nast Traveler!  Not quite an amusement park in the traditional sense, La Cité du Vin is a wine museum dedicated to the history of wine and the wine cultures of the world.  And it was plain amazing!!  Per la Cité du Vin’s own website, the wine museum’s mission is to “promote and share the cultural, universal and living heritage that is wine with the broadest possible audience,” with a focus on emotions, sensations and imagination, and the museum certain did a good job of that!  We allotted about 3 hours for the museum and lunch and could have spent so much longer (and everything wasn’t even open yet since the museum had just opened)!  Plan accordingly!

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Restaurant Review: La Tupina – The Most Delicious Restaurant In Bordeaux That I Almost Skipped!

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Before visiting Bordeaux, I googled lots of “where to eat in Bordeaux”/“best restaurant in Bordeaux,” etc. blogs and read numerous Bordeaux restaurant reviews, and let me tell you, there are a lot of fabulous restaurants in and around Bordeaux, including a number of Michelin starred restaurants! Choosing the right Bordeaux restaurant can be quite overwhelming, and can take up a good bit of your time.

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Many options – this one is not La Tupina!

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Wine Cruising to Sauternes with Bordeaux Office de Tourisme

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Dan and I visited the city of Bordeaux and its surrounding wine regions in June 2016.  For those unfamiliar with Bordeaux wine, there are no actual vineyards in the city of Bordeaux (it is a regular city with a large university).  The famous “Bordeaux wine” comes from a number of small regions surrounding Bordeaux.  Wines take their name from the specific small region in which their grapes are grown, and the flavor of grapes that make up the wine derives from the “terroir” of each specific area (roughly translated as a combination of the soil content, temperature, rain fall, sunlight, etc. of the individual region).  See the map of the many wine regions and sub-regions surrounding Bordeaux:

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A DIY Day Trip to Saint Martin, Île de Ré

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Île de Ré (“IDR” going forward) is a popular vacation island just of the coast of La Rochelle.  IDR is very popular with the French, especially Parisians, and has been referred to by numerous travel insiders as the Martha’s Vineyard of France. I took a day trip from La Rochelle to the main town on IDR, Saint-Martin-de-Ré (“Saint Martin” for short) in June. Saint Martin is the largest and most popular of 10 communes on IRD. St. Martin is located in the center of IDR on the Atlantic Ocean, although it does not have a beach.  For that, you will have to rent a bicycle and travel to a neighboring town. Saint Martin dates back to hundreds of years and is surrounded by a fort constructed by Louis XIV’s engineer, Vauban!

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