I spent this week in France, the first half in Bordeaux followed by a couple of days in Paris. Every year, the division of the company that I work for gives a recognition award to around 50 staff, with the prize of a trip abroad along with our CEO, our Head of People & Culture, and a number of other CxOs as hosts. All of the award winners are allowed to bring someone with them on the trip. My wife had planned to come for the first half, even getting special dispensation from her school for a few days off work, but ultimately pulled out after our eldest son’s plans to go to college in the US rapidly accelerated in August. As much as I’m sure he would have coped, it didn’t feel right to leave our younger son at home on his own, managing his schoolwork, his meals and our pets. So I went solo.
This was the second time that I’ve won the award, four years after the first. Back then, we were in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, so a trip abroad was downscaled to a hamper and cash. As generous (and delicious) as that was, it wasn’t a patch on the experience of going away with everyone. I felt a little guilty about being singled out for the projects that we ran last year as their successes were a massive team effort from everyone involved. But I also felt humbled and grateful that colleagues felt that they wanted to put me forward for the award.
As soon as my wife decided that she wasn’t going to come, I took a closer look at the travel details. A 7:35am flight from Gatwick on Sunday would have involved waking up at 3am, so I decided to book myself a flight for the evening before, as well as one night in a hotel. I picked the Moxy, which was about the same price as a low-cost hotel chain, but looked a little funkier and was closer to where I would need to join the group the next day. Unfortunately, our flight was delayed, so I didn’t end up getting to the hotel until after 10pm.
Despite the late hour, I was keen to stretch my legs and explore. My Bordeaux adventure got off to an inauspicious start when, not more than 30 seconds’ walk away from the hotel, someone in a passing car threw a water bomb at my back, one that I later found had been fashioned from a half-eaten bag of chorizo bites. (At least, I hope it was water.) It took me a few moments to work out what had gone on, by which time the car had driven off into the distance. It put me in a bad mood as I now had to dry out my clothes and potentially pay to have them cleaned. Being soaked in an unknown liquid was a good signal to cut my losses and go to bed.
The next morning I woke up early and went in search of breakfast but couldn’t find anything. The Moxy hotel is in a ‘cool’ part of town, but not a place where street cafés are plentiful. I gave up and decided to head to the Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes hotel, where we would all be staying, to see if they would check me into my room early. As I waited for the room to be ready, I went for a wander, found a PAUL bakery and picked up a burnt pastry and rank coffee. Fortunately this prelude to the main trip was the low point, and everything got immeasurably better from here on in.
After checking into my room, I waited in the lobby and met a bunch of colleagues from Angola and Tanzania who had also arrived early. A small coach took us to our first venue, Château Kirwan. Before we had a chance to meet any of the other delegates, the staff whisked us off for a short visit to their fermentation room and cellar.
Everyone gathered back at the main building, where we were treated to a canapé lunch and drinks. People were doing well considering most of them had just stepped off overnight long-haul flights. I started chatting to various colleagues and their partners, learning a bit more about the people that I would be spending the week with.
After a long, leisurely lunch, we boarded coaches to take us back to the hotel so that people could check in and get freshened up before a cocktail dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was lovely to meet people and make new friends, as well as chat to people from other offices that I knew but hadn’t spoken to in years.
During the week, I managed to make it out early for some 10km runs — twice in Bordeaux and once in Paris — which helped offset all of the eating. The route in Bordeaux was pleasing in that doing a loop that crossed one bridge and then crossed back two bridges later came to just over 10km. There were so many runners by the riverside in Bordeaux, and there was a flow of them all day that was as constant as that of the river.
On Monday morning we split up into four groups, each of which had pre-selected a different activity. I was booked on a trip to visit Château Smith Haut Lafitte, a winery that planted its first grape vines in 1365. The place was stunningly beautiful, from the gorgeous buildings, to the neatly planted grape vines, to the large pieces of artwork that had been placed around the grounds. Owners Florence and Daniel Cathiard met when they were part of the French national ski team. After running chains of family-owned supermarkets and sporting goods shops, they sold the businesses and purchased the château in 1990. They have since invested in and developed the site, achieving organic certification in 2019, installing sculptures throughout the grounds and developing their wine tourism business. Everything about the château felt classy and well-loved.
After a leisurely and delicious lunch at the château, we took the coach back to our hotel. As I went to head back to my room, someone handed me a wristband for entry into La Cité du Vin, Bordeaux’s beautifully architected wine museum. The group that had headed there in the morning had been given a set of extra passes and a few members of the team were keen to go back. I was very tired, but I knew I’d regret just going back to my room to rest, so I joined them.
The museum itself was well-produced, but felt too digital. All visitors were given a headset and receiver, which triggered when you walked into a particular space or waved it in front of a panel. The exhibits were good, but they were all custom-made for the space; I didn’t see any historical examples of wine, corks or bottles, for example.
After our visit, we rolled back along the riverfront and met up with some other colleagues for a drink before going in search of somewhere for dinner. Gruppomimo was exactly what we were looking for; an Italian with plenty on the menu and a big round table that could seat everyone in our group.
On Tuesday morning there was nothing planned and I was keen to get a few hours to myself after all of the socialising. I love meeting and talking with people I don’t know, but I know the signs of when I need to recharge. I wandered from our hotel down to the river and along to the old town. I found a café, ordered a drink and caught up with some admin, including finishing off last week’s weeknotes, before going off to explore the record and CD shops of the old town.
Tuesday night was the main event, a formal awards dinner in the hall of the Palais de la Bourse. I found myself sitting next to the mother of one of the winners, who told me that she had never been abroad in her life. This is one of the big things that made the trip special, with so many people going outside of their country for the first time.
It was a late night followed by an early morning as we had to have our luggage ready for a van to take it to Paris. We took the train, speeding through the French countryside at over 300kmh.
Paris itself was a revelation for me. I’ve been through it many times in order to change trains on the way to somewhere else, but I’d never properly visited. Given its reputation as a capital city of romance, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so beautiful.
Our adventure started with a trip to the Eiffel Tower. This also surpassed my expectations. It’s an iconic historic monument, but to my mind has always had a temporary, half-finished look about it, almost like a wireframe prototype for something more permanent. Seeing it in real life changed my perception completely. It’s an incredible structure, and much bigger than I expected. At the base of the structure, which you get to after going through a security check, you see brown paint spattered all over the floor from where the metal beams were most recently decorated. The yawning void at the base of the structure is incredible in size, and the intricacy and decorative nature of the steelwork is stunning.
Getting up to the second floor was fun, ascending one of the legs of the structure via the large elevators that resembled a funicular railway. The views here were good, but they weren’t a patch on what we could see from the top level, which at 276m above ground is the highest public observation deck in the European Union.
Our visit was short, but it was long enough. The queue to get the elevators back down wound its way around the observation deck and it took quite a while before we were on our way. After getting back on our coach, we drove up the Champs-Élysées, past the Arc de Triomphe, and on to our next hotel.
We didn’t have long at the hotel before we had to get ready for an evening’s river cruise, with dinner, drinks and dancing as we travelled along the Seine. It was a wonderful evening, meeting and talking to people that I hadn’t yet spent much time with, and watching everyone let their hair down as the DJ played. Seeing the Eiffel Tower lit up at night was breathtaking, especially when it sparkled for five minutes at the start of a new hour. We finished the night with a final drink back at the hotel bar before heading to bed.
On Thursday we had our final group activity, with people going off in four different directions until lunchtime. I was booked on a guided tour of the Louvre. At first, it seemed that we wouldn’t make it inside the building as a result of the general strike that was taking place that day. Our tour guide suggested that instead we plan a different tour, taking in some of the streets and passageways in the surrounding area. We started outside by the Louvre Pyramid, took some photos and pondered our next move. Someone overheard that the museum might be opening soon, so we thought we’d take a chance and join one of the queues, giving ourselves a deadline for when we would give up and go and do something else. After 25 minutes or so, the doors opened, and after going through the airport-style security checks, we found ourselves in a wonderfully underpopulated museum.
Information poured out of our guide, giving us historical facts about the museum itself as we wandered around what used to be a moat of the old Louvre fortress. As we made our way through rooms of Roman statues, the museum started to fill up with people, until it got uncomfortably busy. We continued to learn from our guide, who explained what we were looking at, how we could identify the gods depicted in the statues and how some of the discoveries were made.
To find the Mona Lisa, we just had to move in the direction of the densest crowds, and eventually squeeze past some of them, through a tiny entrance to a large room. Seeing the painting in person was a fascinating experience, but not because of the painting itself; layers of people stood in front of the artwork, many — possibly most — with their phones and cameras out, taking pictures. It didn’t make any sense to me. High-definition digital versions of the painting are surely available online. While you are there in front of the painting, why not look at it with your own eyes, something you won’t be able to do as soon as you leave the room?
We wandered out of the museum and followed our guide to a nearby restaurant, where we met up with other colleagues and enjoyed a delicious and delicate French lunch.
In the afternoon I wandered around Paris, visiting more record and CD shops, before heading back to the hotel. Some of us met up for a final get-together, retiring to bed exhausted not long after midnight. The next day, everyone was on their way home.
It was an incredible experience, one that I feel very privileged to have been a part of. It was lovely to get to know new colleagues and friends, and to create these shared memories.
A few other things from this week:
Media
Podcasts
- Great to hear from Danny Dyer on Desert Island Discs. I don’t think I learned a great deal about him that I didn’t already know, but it was a fun listen.
Video
- Apropos of nothing, I re-watched Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) across a number of days. If you just go with the silly story, ridiculous over-acting and bizarre plot points, it’s a fun movie. And the songs are so catchy.
- Watched another couple of episodes of Australian show You Can’t Ask That on Netflix, one focusing on deaf people and another on those with Down’s Syndrome. It’s an incredible programme.
- Dived into the mad world of Charlie Sheen through the new two-part Netflix film. Given his central involvement in the documentary, I am sure that there is a certain amount of rose-tinting in the final output. But what was left in was shocking enough. The main impression I came away with is that he’s a very fortunate guy to have so many loving people around him.
Books
- Still making progress through Jon Savage’s The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979). I don’t think I’m quite halfway through this giant tome. It’s excellent.
Next week: Back to work, and hosting an Album Club.
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