Last October, our Instagram followers witnessed our amazing trip to Bordeaux and here’s our travel notes from this beautiful city in southwestern France.

By Senay GOKCEN | Editor-in-Chief & Mutti PORTO | Editor-at-Large

Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River and you can view this beautiful river while landing at the Bordeaux Airport.

Since our team members are working on various areas – from fashion to automotive design, from architecture to the fresh food industry; we travel as much as we can to gain more inspiration from different cultures of cities and countries.

Grand Hommes, Bordeaux.

Last October, taking the advantages of our business trip, we planned a quick city tour and started our route by visiting the chic Grand Hommes, Quinconces District at the center of Bordeaux.

You know you’re in France when you see Galeries Lafayette Stores.

There were so many ‘the best of the best’ French fashion brands’ stores, luscious French patisseries, artisan chocolatiers, bistro cafés and charcuteries in and around these locations. But when you’re travelling with pregnant team members you experience the ‘aha’ moment of “Houston we have a problem!” The reality of hanging meats and sausages from the ceilings don’t make any sense of inspiration when someone in your team is having ‘morning sickness’; but shops that sell quality artisan chocolates, melted not only our hearts but kept us going from one meeting to another.

Muffin + Brownie! Yesssss Please!

We ♥ chocolate! One must visit all the French patisseries and artisan chocolatiers in Bordeaux.

French #charcuteries #deli#meat #broscettes #shish #kebab

It’s hard to tell which brand’s collection is the nicest this season, because it’s French Fashion, how could them look bad any way? We fell in love with Anne Fontaine’s Fall 2015 Collection at Galeries Lafayette, with its beautiful white blouses paired with black trousers and accessorized with gold metals. These are truly must-haves of the season. Swarovski’s sparkling ‘Stardust Collection’ and Hermés’ store displays were our favorite ones with their bold and bright color palettes.

Hermès’ ‘Fall 2015 Accessories Collection’.

Anne Fontaine’s ‘Fall 2015 Collection’.

Swarovski’s sparkling ‘Stardust Collection’.

LANCEL’s ‘Fall 2015 Accessories Collection’.

For the day two, we spent our whole spare time at the Rue Sainte-Catherine, which is the main shopping street in Bordeaux. The weather was fine and we had great time while walking through this 1.2 km long pedestrian street and enjoyed spotting the interesting trends on the window displays.

Bordeaux has many pedestrian streets.

Bordeaux proves that it still is the world’s major wine industry capital when you visit well-known wineries and vineyards. They even grow grapes at the airport, which is not an unusual thing for a city like Bordeaux, when you learn that ‘Bordeaux wine’ has been produced in this region since the 8th century!

They even grow grapes at the airport?? Yes, you’re in Bordeaux.

The more you tour around the city, the more you understand the value of the historic part of the city and why it is on the UNESCO World Heritage List as “an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble” of the 18th century.

The wineries and vineyards are located on the south of the city of Bordeaux, in the commune of Martillac and we spent the third day of our visit in the Martillac, Aquatine region.

A very nice video about vineyards and wine tourism by Bordeaux Tourist Office.

We visited Château Smith Haut Lafitte, visited their white and red wine cellars and had an amazing dinner with our business partners. The wines we tasted were delicious, so rich in flavor and smoky. And some of them were extremely sweet like sherbet.

Bordeaux, the land of wine, gastronomy, art and fashion, is now a part of our ‘Double the Visit’ city list, so it will be fine to be here again in the near future.

Please visit our Flickr pages to view our Bordeaux photo collections or follow the links below.

BORDEAUX: The Art of Living ///Fashion///

Click here for the full collection.

BORDEAUX: The Art of Living ///Architecture///

Click here for the full collection.

BORDEAUX: The Art of Living ///Decoration///

Click here for the full collection.

BORDEAUX: The Art of Living ///Gastronomy & Food///

Click here for the full collection.

BORDEAUX: The Art of Living ///Vineyards & Nature///

Click here for the full collection.

All images copyright by Senay GOKCEN & Mutti PORTO. All rights reserved.

Tags: architecture, art, Bordeaux, culture, fashion, Fashion Stores, food, France, history, interior, interior design, Mutti PORTO, Senay GOKCEN, style, Top, travel, YouTube