Home Sweet Home
Perhaps I should start by orienting you to my time and place – and more specifically introducing you to where I live.
Bordeaux is about 2 hours south of Paris by TGV. Heart marks the spot.
I live in Caudéran, a neighborhood in Bordeaux about two miles outside the city center. Bordeaux has a population of just under a million residents, making it the fifth largest city in France.
Despite its size, Bordeaux does not have the feel of being a “big city.” With the exception of an administration building (named La Cité administrative) just off Boulevard President Wilson, there aren’t any skyscrapers. Instead, the city is characterized by grand 18th century stone buildings with magnificent “mascarons” (“masks” or statuaries along the facades of the grand old buildings) in the old quarter and along the riverfront. More recent (and slightly more modest) two to three story stone buildings feature throughout the sprawling city, with the more “modern” - but ironically much more dated - Meriadeck Center in the middle of the city as the odd exception to the rule.
In the French fashion there are wide central boulevards (Cours George Clemenceau, Place de la Comédie), iron grill gated balconies and plenty of public parks. The city is well kept, with “mini (truly mini) trash cars and street sweepers equipped to navigate the narrow, cobblestoned side-streets.
Outside the historic section, houses are often framed in jasmine, and occasionally wisteria or another climbing ivy. As part of the city’s beautification scheme, homeowners can apply to the city to repurpose old gas line “holes” as planting beds and are issued two plants to grow along their door stops (regulation jasmine or a tall tropical-looking flower I can’t place - see picture below).
In my previous stays in Bordeaux (July - September ‘21; May ‘22), I lived downtown, first near Saint-Pierre and later in the Chartrons (my favorite neighborhood). Today, I live in “the suburbs” - designated as the other side of Boulevard President Wilson. Boulevard President Wilson encircles Bordeaux, and serves as the demarcation line between downtown Bordeaux and the rest of the world. This is no “inner beltway” though - but instead, when you take away the bus and bike lane a two lane road with stop lights. All streets run to the Boulevard.
Once you cross the Boulevard, you are in Caudéran. Caudéran is the “petit Neuilly bordelais;” Neuilly being the chic, “bourgeois” neighborhood adjacent to Paris. The comparison is apt. Until 1965 when it was annexed by Bordeaux, Caudéran was an independent town. It has retained that sense of a independence. There is a Mairie (town hall), central church (église Saint Amand), an historic tennis club “Villa Primrose”, and the massive Parc Bordelais. Most of Caudéran is unpretentious in layout and architecture - but there are a few streets that feature not houses but the grander hôtel particulier(s): Avenue de Mirande (near Villa Primerose) and Avenue. Felix Faure (abutting the Jesuit school Saint Joseph de Tivoli). It is pleasant to walk down these avenues with eyes that are half-dreaming (if only!) and half-critical (if I had that kind of money I wouldn’t have that kind of topiary/house color/drapes).
For myself, I live in a tiny house at the end of a long, driveway off one of the busy, main streets. It is tranquil but also in close reach of all the things (most especially to Carrefour - the neighborhood grocery).
The house opens to a large, tile floored front room with a kitchen on one end and a fireplace, skylight and sitting room area on the other end, and a small loft over the kitchen area. From the front door, to the right is the door to the single bedroom. From the bedroom there is a hall to the bathroom and toilet (separate rooms in the traditional French fashion), and leading to a sitting room or playroom, which has been repurposed as my office. My desk faces the wide windows overlooking the long narrow driveway.
It is perfect, and it is known as “The Annex” to the big house that is also part of the property, where my friend Emilie lives with her family. As I understand it, the house previously belonged to a woman who sold the property to her neighbors (the owners of the main house prior to Emilie) when she moved into a nursing home. A hedge of bushes and bamboo separates The Annex and the main house.
I can’t speak of where I live and my daily life without mentioning Emilie and her family.
It is because of Emilie that I live in Cauderan – and if you look even further back, Emilie is directly responsible for my visiting Bordeaux in the first place. I met Emilie many years ago (2005) when I completed an internship with the US State Department at the American Presence Post (ie: mini consulate) in Brittany. Emilie was the Cultural Affairs Attache at the Post. She took me under her wing and we became friends. We reconnected when I visited Bordeaux in 2021 and when she and her sons visited the United States the following year. When I moved to Bordeaux she invited me to stay with her at the annex while I looked for a place, and then to stay as a tenant.
There is, of course, so much more to say of Emilie and her family - but that will hold for another day.
Until then!
