Le Dîner d'ILP et Bordeaux à la Nuit

The dinner for the end of the Intensive Language Program was really fun! It was at Les Provinces, a restaurant in downtown Bordeaux. The restaurant was pretty nice; I wouldn't say it was super fancy, but for a student on a budget, it was. Let's just say there were two knives! Although, they did say Ikea on them... Anyways, the first course was a salad with toast and goat cheese. Who knew the French put toast in their salad? Also, goat cheese seems to be super popular here; "fromage de chèvre" is everywhere. It's very soft, almost cream cheese-like in texture. It's very good though!

The main course was duck for most people, and salmon for the vegetarians (or "vegetarians"). I'm pretty glad I ordered salmon because the duck wasn't that great and it came with French (literally) fries. And who wants to just eat French fries at a nice restaurant? But the salmon was really good and came with some kind of rice with herbs. There was also red wine with the dinner, and I tried some. A certain cousin of mine was right; I did like red wine more than white or rosé! I still stuck to half a glass though. My table is always the one trading our wine for other tables' water!

For dessert, we had these pastries to the left. They were little chilled pastry balls with cream inside and then hot chocolate sauce and slivered almonds on top. So good!!! The usual dessert in France is like plain yogurt or grapes (despite all the patisseries!). So I was glad to have something with chocolate! Plus they were on these cool square plates - classy, classy!


They even had little cafés for us afterward! Complete with sugar cubes! This was only my second time having French coffee, but I may have to pick the pace because it's really good. I'm sure I'll start drinking coffee again with classes start. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but the cup is really small, kind of like teacup-sized. Most of the coffee comes in tiny cups here because I think it's usually espresso, not regular coffee. There really are a lot of people who sit in cafes for hours drinking an espresso! Even cheap sandwich/kebab places sell them.

The dinner ended at around 9:30, and afterward, some other students and I went to the Mirroir d'Eau, which is a shallow pool of water (maybe a half-inch deep) across the street from a square with these really pretty stone buildings and a fountain. During the day, there are a lot of young kids running through it, and people splashing each other. But at night, it's much calmer, and all the buildings are lit up and reflected perfectly in the pool. It's so pretty! The pool empties and refills on a schedule, and when it refills it lets out mist, which looks really cool, like something out of a movie. When it's all filled, the reflection is perfectly clear; it's amazing. I definitely want to go downtown some more at night (not too late though!).


À bientôt!