Bordeaux

Bordeaux stands on the Garonne in the Gironde, a port city and the capital of Nouvelle-Aquitaine as well as the prefecture of its department, with a population of 267,991 in the city proper. Its people are Bordelais, a word that stretches to cover the surrounding wine country too. The eighteenth-century river frontage is the set piece, a long curve of pale stone along the water, and the city is flat, walkable and increasingly given over to trams and bicycles rather than cars. The vineyards begin within half an hour, on the hillsides of the Gironde.