Tours are open for all levels of experience, from debutantes to connoisseurs.  For more information or bookings, please visit the web site http://www.BXWINEX.com.  For reservations, phone 33 5.56.20.64.12 from outside France (English spoken) or send a fax to 33 5.56. 21.79.44 or an email to info@BXWINEX.com

Some of The Bordeaux Wine Experience's past tour participants had this to say:

A Franco-American Portrait

AG   To how many countries of the world have you travelled? 

CD   I guess it would be easier to count the countries I haven't been to, since I’ve visited upwards of 190. Some countries having split into so many others, it makes the 'exact arithmetic' a bit difficult. 

AG   Wow! You seem to be 'infected' by a serious and enduring – perhaps incurable? – dose of wanderlust. Did this begin the year you, aged 16, spent as an exchange high school student in Menlo Park, California?

CD   That was a  dream experience for me, but it most probably sprang from earlier influences.

AG.  For example?

CD   To begin with, one of my grandfathers was an ocean-going ship captain, and the other owned a bookshop!  Cross the two,  and, maybe genetically, you get me today!

AG   And more concretely?

CD  Aged eleven (that was 1958), I wasn't a 'good' pupil so my parents sent me for a year to a boarding school in England. This was intensive immersion since I was the only French kid there. The geography teacher was a real revelation and made me daydream.   I'd decided that, when grown up, I would visit the USA. Luckily, I didn't have to wait all that long and a bit later got an American Field Service scholarship to the high school in Menlo Park. That was a fairytale experience for me.

AG  Really a 'fairytale' in Cold War America?

CD  Okay, I didn't understand why, at that school, we had to say a prayer committing ourselves to study well so that the Russians wouldn't invade America!  But,  many, many things struck me as positively different from my French teenager's existence.

You could even see my knees . . .

AG  For instance?

CD  To begin with, I could hardly believe what I'd call the 'magic openness' of my host family's welcome. I really was their foster daughter! Then, compared to France at that time, there were the free-and-easy relations between teachers and pupils. Also, we had plenty of fun extracurricular activities – I took dance, water ballet, archery.   In France, I'd have been lucky to get a single hour of gym per week! And then, interpersonal and intergenerational relations at home weren't generally all that easygoing.

AG  An example? 

CD  Well, in France nobody – adult or, even less, age-peer - would have ever dared ask me how much my Dad earned a month. At my Menlo Park home and school that sort of question wasn't at all taboo.

AG  Other pleasant differences?

CD  Humm, let's see… Oh yes, TV! In France then we had only one network and it generally wasn't on the air for more than three hours a day. In the States I had a glutton's choice. And,  if people thought I watched too late at night, well I could answer that it helped my English!

AG  The downside?

CD  As an American high school  student in those days you had to be 'in'  ~  run with a kind of pack of other girls who always had dates for parties. No date? No party! And too bad for you if you weren’t 'iIn'. 

AG  You were accepted as 'in'?

CD As the one Frenchie around, pretty much yes. But, first of all, the skirts with which I arrived from my French home were considered too short (you could even see my knees!) and they had to be lengthened.

AG   Any other less agreeable discoveries?

CD   Inter-racial relations, or rather the lack of them, surprised me. I never witnessed outright, aggressive racism. But Blacks and Whites didn't mix; and even just talking to each other wasn't exactly encouraged. 

The Marlboro Cowboy

AG   You’ve revisited the States many times since your high school exchange.

CD Yes, particularly for a year in New York City when I actively 'hung out' getting to know  the place.

AG   That was another adventure of American discovery?

CD   Oh,  yes! At first I lived with a strict Rabbi's family and then moved to an apartment occupied by fashion models. I got on with them fine. They invited me one evening to a theater try-out. At one point someone tapped me on the shoulder to ask for a light.

AG   And?

CD   He turned out to be the Marlboro ad cowboy!

AG  Turning to your well-named Ulysse bookshop, I know there is concern in some circles that people seem to be reading less and less books. What's your experience?

CD   I don't have macro figures at my fingertips, but I see no reason why people shouldn't get their information over the Net – on sites like FRANCE On Your Own, for example! In any event, I haven’t seen my 'business' slump noticeably. Indeed,  I've now launched a second Ulysse Bookstore, open June to September at Hendaye, a seaside resort in the Basque country. Although I'm very specialized, I get in both places a pretty broad cross-section of clients. Americans or English or Spaniards just wander in off the street looking for a good guidebook to Paris. Then, too, I have people who are looking for very pinpointed items.

AG  Such as a trekking trail map to southern Chile?

CD  (laughs) Yes, that sort of thing, but sometimes even much more precise, such as a specific, if somewhat obscure,  edition of the diary of a French artist who canoed down the St. Lawrence River in 1891. Also, I don't just buy and sell books and maps. Those activities have bloomed into promoting freighter travel through the Cargo Club, for instance, and even more recently creating the Hendaye Pierre Loti Prize. Named for a French naval officer of a century ago who wrote wonderfully about the Middle East, the Pacific region and so on, it is intended to promote current travel writing.

Tips for on-your-own travelers

AG   To end, any tips for English-speaking visitors wanting to construct their own tour(s) of France?

CD   Many, of course – too, too many! So let’s keep it to two.

AG   First?

CD  Whether visiting France for the first or tenth time, don't try to 'do' everything – or even many major sites - during a single vacation. Among American and other English-speaking visitors, the temptation to 'see France in fifteen days' is, to be sure, much weaker than, say, a decade ago. But I still meet people ending a visit frustrated by remembering all-too-little of the numerous places they have just rushed to hither and yon. So I urge visitors to concentrate on given region at a time: read up on it beforehand, stay there, walk and bike it, take time over visiting its major – and even minor (they can be the most unexpectedly striking) – attractions, eat the local cuisine, and talk to the people with your hands and mimics if you don’t speak French.

AG  And the second tip?

CD   Following on what I just said, an ideal way to begin to get to know a given region – what I call 'real France' - is to base oneself with a rural family for a week or so. Not just bed-and-breakfast but sharing with the hosts. One structure for doing this is Bienvenue à la Ferme – 'Welcome to the Farm' which has hosts specialized in ecological and educational activities. Check its English Website: http://www.bienvenue-a-la-ferme.com/en/accueil.htm.

...now, where the heck is that trekking trail map to southern Chile??