April 26, 2026

Greetings!

Hello from stunning Rouen! We enjoyed two relaxing days at sea after our outstanding two days in Bordeaux. Seabourn really pulled out all the stops, including a deftly executed pirouette (when the captain makes the ship turn 360 degrees) at the bend in the Garonne so we could back into our prime location, just outside the Maritime Bourse. The Bordelais were out in full force, enjoying the spring sunshine, and we surged forward to join them.

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I can’t think of a better location, and it was an utter treat to have two full days in the city. My new talk on the history of Bordeaux was well attended by guests eager to make the most of their time in this elegant and accessible city.

Dmitry and I divided our two days into a laid-back wander through the city’s medieval quarter with visits to the Gros Cloche, Saint Andre Cathedral, and several of the well-appointed cafes to enjoy some Bordeaux wines in situ. We picked up pate, bread, and cornichons for a picnic on the balcony, which was thoroughly enjoyable.

The following day, I ticked off one of my bucket list experiences with several hours at Bordeaux’s Cité du Vin. I’ve been to Bordeaux several times, but have never had the time this superb museum deserves. I was determined to put that right on this longer visit, and it was an utter delight!

Bordeaux spent most of the twentieth century coasting on the grandeur of its châteaux and the prestige of its appellation system, a city that seemed content to let its wine do the talking while the talking was done somewhere considerably more attractive.

The Cité du Vin, opened in 2016 was in many ways the capstone to the immense transformation of the city by its energetic mayor, Alain Juppe in the 1990s. Taking the controversial but ultimately hugely successful decision to invest in the city’s beauty, Juppe cleaned up the dingy facades, introduced the city’s impressive tram system, and opened things up for a steady flow of tourists.

Cité du Vin opened on the left bank of the Garonne, in a quarter that had itself been quietly regenerating for a decade. The building alone is worth the detour: designed by Anouk Legendre and Nicolas Desmazièresof the Paris firm XTU Architects, it rises in a sinuous spiral of glass and aluminum that evokes wine swirling in a glass, and unlike many buildings that set out to be architectural statements, it delivers.

Inside, the permanent collection covers not just Bordeaux but wine civilizations across six thousand years of human history, from the vineyards of ancient Mesopotamia to the skin-contact wines currently fermenting in a Georgian qvevri. The approach is immersive and occasionally theatrical, which divides opinion among serious wine people but tends to delight everyone else.

What I find most interesting about the Cité du Vin is how shrewdly it reframes Bordeaux itself. The city had long been associated, not always flatteringly, with a certain mercantile solemnity: this was the place where négociants and courtiers conducted their centuries-old rituals of classification and pricing, where wine was serious business and serious business was wine. The museum punctures that a little, connecting the great Bordeaux trade to the broader story of how wine moved along sea routes and river valleys to shape cultures it had no business reaching.

A ticket includes a tasting at the Belvedere on the top floor, with panoramic views over the Garonne and the Médoc beyond, and I will simply say that this is one of the better ways I know to spend an afternoon in port. We paired it with a lavish lunch in the museum’s elegant 7 Restaurant with the same superb panoramic views. A wonderful experience I recommend whole heartedly!

Find out more about Cité du Vin and Bordeaux in my 8 Hour Guide to Bordeaux.

A Time of Gifts, by Patrick Leigh Fermor

In December 1933, an eighteen-year-old Patrick Leigh Fermor set out from the Hook of Holland with a rucksack, a volume of Horace, and the ambition to walk to Constantinople. What he eventually wrote about it, decades later, with the full resources of a life richly lived, is one of the great travel books in the English language.

​A Time of Gifts follows the young Fermor through Holland, Germany, Austria, and into Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and what strikes the modern reader (beyond the exhilarating prose) is how fully he inhabited a Europe that was already, invisibly, on the edge of catastrophe. He was sleeping in baronial schlösser and farm outbuildings in equal measure while the Brownshirts marched in the streets; he had no idea, and neither, quite yet, did Europe. For anyone sailing into the Rhine or the Danube or any of the ports of Central Europe, there is no better preparation: Fermor gives you the bones of a civilization before it was broken, and somehow that makes the restored version all the more vivid when you walk off the gangway.

The Greeks: A Global History, by Roderick Beaton

What do the ancient Greeks, the Byzantine emperors, the merchants of Smyrna, and the shipping magnates of Piraeus have in common? Roderick Beaton's answer (that they are all chapters in a single, still-unfolding story) sounds almost too ambitious to pull off, yet The Greeks: A Global History does exactly that with considerable elegance and scholarly authority.

Beaton is one of the more distinguished British Hellenist of his generation, and what he brings to this sweeping survey is the conviction that the Greeks are not a subject for antiquarians but a living, restless, expansive civilization that has been shaping the world, quietly and persistently, for three thousand years. I found this book transforms my visits to Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean: once you understand that the Greek world was always a diaspora, always a network rather than a territory, the ruins and the modern cities and the faces on the quay all click into something far more coherent. Indispensable for any cruise in the Aegean, the Adriatic, or the Levant.

Basque Country: A Food Lover's Journey, by Marti Buckley

Marti Buckley's particular genius is that she arrived in the Basque Country as an outsider from Alabama, fell utterly in love with it, and then had the discipline and skill to write about it in a way that makes the reader feel equally besotted.

​Basque Country is nominally a cookbook, but it reads more like a sustained argument: that this small, fiercely particular corner of the world has produced a culinary culture so sophisticated, so specific, and so gloriously itself that it deserves the same reverent attention we give to the great cuisines of Paris or Kyoto. And she makes the case convincingly, one recipe at a time: pintxos, salt cod in every conceivable guise, the unctuous darkness of a proper marmitako. This is exactly the kind of book I tuck into a carry-on before a Bay of Biscay cruise: it doesn't just tell you what to eat in San Sebastián or Bilbao, it tells you why it matters, which is an altogether more useful piece of information.

Under the Shadow of Agamemnon: The Real Bronze Age Mycenae on Let's Talk About Myths, Baby

Host Liv Albert has built a devoted following, and rightly so, by approaching Greek myth with exactly the right combination of deep knowledge and cheerful irreverence. This episode, part of a longer series, turns the lens on Mycenae itself: the actual Bronze Age citadel behind the legends, the Lion Gate, the shaft graves, the civilization that Homer was gesturing toward when he put those famous words in Agamemnon's mouth. Whether you are heading to the Peloponnese or have already been and left feeling that you only half-understood what you saw, Albert's is the voice you want in your ear. Albert has a gift for making the scholarship feel urgent rather than academic, and the Mycenaean world, which is genuinely strange and magnificent, comes alive under her treatment.

Patrick Leigh Fermor with Artemis Cooper on Aspects of History

Artemis Cooper's biography Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure is masterpiece: a book that manages to be as readable as its subject, which is no small achievement. In this conversation on the marvelous Aspects of History podcast, Cooper talks through Fermor's extraordinary life: the wartime Crete operation, the abduction of General Kreipe, the years in the Mani, the almost comically long gestation of the trilogy. If you've already read A Time of Gifts (see above), this is the perfect companion. It fills in the life around the art and makes both richer. And if you haven't read it yet, consider this episode an excellent teaser.

Jessica Mitford's Handbag on the London Review of Books Podcast

The Mitford sisters have been generating copy for the British press for ninety years, and the supply shows no sign of running dry. The subject of this LRB podcast episode is Decca (Jessica Mitford), possibly the most interesting of the six: she ran away to the Spanish Civil War with her cousin, became a committed American communist, reinvented herself as a muckraking journalist, and generally led a life that would strain credulity in a novel. The conversation centers on Carla Kaplan's new biography Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford, which sounds, from the extracts read here, as bracingly un-reverential as its subject deserves. The LRB podcast is always worth your time, but this particular episode has the additional virtue of being about someone genuinely outrageous (the name of the hit TV series about the family) which makes for excellent company on a long tender ride ashore.

Be sure to check in with the Destination Resources Reading Lists, which I update regularly with new books, podcasts, TV and film, and other resources designed to make your travel meaningful. I did a big update recently, changing the format to make it easier to navigate. Visit via this link!

​Basque Cuisine: Fire, Sea, and the Genius of the Pintxo​

​What to Do in Bilbao: Guggenheim, Pintxos & Basque Coast​

​Treasures of the Louvre Museum: A Guide to 10 Iconic Works​

​The Discerning Traveler’s Guide to Port Wine​

​The Rise of Islam: From Desert Sands to a Global Civilization​

​French Cuisine Through the Ages: A History of Gastronomy and Innovation​

We sail onward! Rouen awaits, and I am very much looking forward to an immersive visit to the Joan of Arc museum and striking modern church devoted to Joan. Tonight I am eating at La Couronne, where Julia Child had her very first French meal! I plan to have the exact same thing: Sole Meuniere. We have two days in Rouen as well, which means plenty of time to wander, get lost, drink wine, and go antiquing.

Not perhaps in that exact order.

Find out more about Rouen in my 8 Hour Guide to the City.

From Rouen, we will cross the channel to visit Plymouth, Portland, and Portsmouth and finally Dover, where I will disembark Ovation with great regret. Though I’ll be back on her in early June for Iceland and Norway.

As a subscriber to the Destination Curation Newsletter, you have access to my cruise schedule , which you can visit here. If any of these voyages align with your travel plans, I'd love to share the journey with you.

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​🇵🇹 Legendary Lisbon 🇵🇹​

​📚Books for Travelers | April 12, 2026 📚​

​🇪🇸 Bewitching Bilbao 🇪🇸​

Safe onward travels!

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