First Class On A TGV
I hadn’t travelled in First on a TGV before, but on this trip I did.
I wasn’t impressed with the leg room, which seemed to be about the same on a Virgin Class 390.
Not Much Legroom
I had thought it would be bigger as the TGV Atlantique has a much larger cross-section, than the British train.
The refreshments were disappointing too.
Disappointing Refreshments
The picture shows, the smoothie and pretzels.
First Class certainly wasn’t worth the extra thirty euros or so.
Compare it with Second Class in the TGV Duplex I took from Geneva to Paris.
In Second Class On A TGV Duplex
I took this picture from my seat on the lower deck. Is it a deck, saloon or floor?
Leaving Bordeaux For Paris
Bordeaux St. Jean station was full of TGV Atlantique trainsets as I left for Paris.
It appeared that some trains were coupled together in pairs, to make massive people movers for the journey to and from Paris. Incidentally, each train can carry 485 psassengers.
I was not worried about the date of Friday the Thirteenth. I’ve left jobs on this date twice and I’ve always gone on to better things.
Experiments With Selfies
I was trying to get a decent picture of myself.
Most seemed to be rubbish, so I only left myself with these. So if I kept these how bad were the others?
Note the Liverpool University Engineering Scarf, I often wear in cold weather.
My Hotel In Bordeaux
I stayed at Le Boutique hotel in Bordeaux.
Le Boutique Hotel In Bordeaux
It was OK and they found me a very good restaurant for supper on Thursday.
But I wouldn’t stay there again, as the lift to get to my room was not to my taste. I can think of some, who would have used it once and left the hotel.
Le Petit Commerce, Bordeaux
The hotel recommended this restaurant for my supper.
Any time I’m in Bordeaux, all other places where I eat will be judged against this restaurant.
It would also have been a place that C would have adored. Like me, she loved to eat fish and that was the bulk of the menu.
So in some ways it was fitting that I ate there six years and a day after she died.
A French Version Of My Mother’s Rule
I’ve said before that my mother told me that stops on the London Underground are two minutes apart. I called it Irene’s law for calculating journey times.
A French Version Of My Mother’s Rule
This picture shows the institutionalised version on the Bordeaux tram.
Their interval is one minute and thirty seconds.
Trams and The Place De La Bourse
I think that this set of pictures show how you can run trams through areas of architectural importance.
Bordeaux is actually a World Heritage Site. The citation states.
an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble
So you don’t really want tram wires all over the place! But then Bordeaux’s trams are trams without wires. Surely the trams in Edinburgh should have been designed without them.
Note too, that there is a tram stop here called Bourse, but the only things you notice are the slightly raised paving and the fact that trams stop and open their doors to let people on and off.
Exploring Bordeaux
These are some of the pictures I took walking around Bordeaux.
It is an easy city to navigate, although a few more maps would help. But there is always a small one at evrery tram stop.
Trams Without Wires
This set of pictures, shows trams running in the city centre and the unique ground level power system called APS.
APS or a system like it, should have been used in Edinburgh to avoid putting up unsightly wires.
Bordeaux’s Trams
Bordeaux has three tram lines that cross in various places in the city centre.
They are larger beasts than typically and in the city centre they run using a ground current collection system, so that there are no unsightly wires.
Every tram stop seems to havce a local map, but these could show a larger area, as two or three times, the place I needed was just off the map.
The Anonymous Widower 