For a £25 return flight to Bordeaux on Ryanair, what did I expect? The budget terminal at Bordeaux airport shares DNA with a lean-to at your Aunt’s, but not quite as nice. Nobody is at the passport desk and when they deign to arrive, the man doesn’t even glance at me to check I am who I say I am. A half hour shuttle bus later and we arrive at the city’s main train station which is a thing of beauty, announcing you are somewhere that deserves your attention. Smart trams whiz us to the centre in a sleek and stylish way and when we arrive, I am a little overcome with envy of the populace of Bordeaux. It is a seriously gorgeous city, with the buildings glowing in a warm honey colour in the afternoon sun, while at the same time the UK is being whipped into a froth by Storm Dennis. We’re staying at Hotel Konti, and it’s brilliantly located, right by the luxury stores I couldn’t afford to visit and it was a reasonable price too. Research conducted once I’d gotten back to the UK suggests that a 3 night stay in June, had 2020 been a normal year, would have been triple the cost.

But fear not, the room isn’t ready, and when it is, we try out our bedside lamps and one of each pair is malfunctioning so at least there’s symmetry at play. Add to that, the twin beds were fused together to make a double bed so we trudge down to the lobby to ask them to turn the double back into twin beds. This takes 20 minutes but the hotel lobby has a ‘cosy corner’ where we are able to have mini cakes and coffee from the terrifying and hostile coffee machine. The machine growls, gurgles and then spits out something hotter than lava roughly into a cup. I know these are reasonably minor quibbles, but when I arrive at a hotel, I always want to have a quick shower and to write “I will not fly Ryanair” 20 times as penance. Despite my moany tone, I’d stay at Hotel Konti again without a doubt.

When we head out into the city, we walk in the direction of the medieval St Pierre district to visit the Phillippe Stark designed Mama Shelter and the rooftop bar. We’re gravely told that the rooftop is full, even on a Sunday night, so we walk about admiring the city while trying to locate ground-level drinks. Like moths drawn to a light, we find ourselves outside what is perhaps the cosiest bar in France, La Comtesse. It’s a sublime space, with ramshackle chairs just on the edge of collapse and with every light covered by a lampshade. The junk shop vibe was exactly what I wanted and the ice-cold beers were the  glacé cherry on the cake. If I lived in Bordeaux, this would be by local, even if I lived far out. The only other bar I have found in France that competes with the level of cosiness is Le Cercle Rouge, in Angers. Any bar playing vinyl of Portishead and The Rolling Stones is going to score high with me.

Dinner at Au Bistrot was a major success, even if the initial welcome was a strange one. Half an hour after the restaurant was scheduled to open, the doors were locked and the staff seemed faintly surprised to see us. They take us inside to what looks like a stock room filled with boxes of wine doubling up as a restaurant, but soon, the open kitchen comes alive with flames from vigorous pan action, something I am far too scared to achieve at home. If I could slow-cook a stir fry, I would. The menu initially appears to offer much in the way of offal, and I refuse to end up retching in a public space over tripe again. Luckily, pork loin which Google translates as  the less yummy backbone of pig came with tender vegetables and a warming peppery sauce. The saucisson with brioche that my friend had was also outstanding. The secret weapon was that the brioche soaked up the rich gravy, creating a heavenly texture. The wine was far too drinkable, which explains the stock room vibe – when it’s this good, people are going to want lots of it. For a nightcap, we went to Frida, bursting with fairy lights, where I was presented with a tropical cocktail in a Tiki mug. I find Tiki mugs to be among the least subtle of containers, the exact thing James Bond instinctively knows to avoid. My cocktail drinking experiences are more Rosa-Klebb-by-the-sea, but I’m a sucker for a cocktail with a bit of dried pineapple in it.

We ended the night walking through more gorgeous streets, the very streets that inspired Baron Haussmann’s remodelling of Paris and the streets that Alain Juppe wanted to be rescued from the blight of pollution and heavy traffic. It is remarkable to think that Bordeaux was, not so long ago, a dirty city, the buildings encrusted with grime and clogged up roads. Where the Miroir d’eau now enchants visitors, stood a giant car park scarring a vista that longed to be seen. It has been a phenomenal change for the better and in some ways it feels like Bordeaux has been reborn.

It’s a slightly strange thing that so many places in Bordeaux are closed on both Sunday and Monday, at a stroke killing off a weekend mini-break if you were so foolish to visit on the same days I visited. As a result, our breakfast options were limited and anywhere that looked cosy or inviting laughed us onto the drizzly street. Eventually we stumble across Kokoma, and have a deeply traditional French brunch of pancakes, bacon and eggs. I was fine with this as the food was great. Kokoma is staffed only by people with beanie hats that don’t cover the ears (an affectation too far in my books) and a young girl in a Kangol hat just waiting for Samuel L Jackson to come up and share fashion tips. Lonely Planet would call it “achingly hip”. After filling up with Le pancakes, we eventually find ourselves in the Bourse to admire the Miroir d’eau, only to find it is turned off and the Bourse is only half visible due to scaffolding and Brad Pitt’s massive face advertising a bank. It’s a little disappointing that a city would do this to us, so we go to find a bar where we’re ignored for ten minutes.

One site that is open on a Monday is the City of Wine. Bordeaux is wine country and the region has an incredible 14,000 producers and 400 wholesale dealers. The UK makes 15 million bottles of wine a year versus 8 billion in France so there’s a lot of history here and a lot of money. The building itself looks somewhat like a decanter and shimmers from afar. It cost €80m to construct and so charges a premium price of €20 for entry. Despite the price tag, it’s the most detailed wine experience I could imagine and as you progress through the building, you’ll be shown a lot of interactive videos about wine from around the world, including Georgian, German and Argentinian wine. The videos are genuinely interesting and you soon realise that people plant vines in the most unfriendly terrain, but still they succeed even if it’d be easier to do almost anything else. Even countries like Pakistan and Canada have a wine-making culture.

Watching videos of people enjoying wine responsibly is all well and good, but where were the videos of tourists picking a fight with a mirror? They really missed a trick there. I hope they follow my advice of creating an escape room experience for hen and stag do’s. Everyone gets locked in a wine cellar and to escape, they need to down a bottle each. It could be the museum’s set-piece.

One of my favourite parts of the museum was the smelling stations where you squeeze a pump and a scent associated with wine comes out. There were smells for all sorts of things, from pears, tobacco, liquorice, peppers and even faeces. A sweet dungy aftertaste, goes down well with a beef wellington. You could call it the Jilly Goolden section. When you have learned all you can about wine before museum fatigue sets in, which takes a couple of hours, you head to the top floor for a glass of wine from countries like China, Portugal, Italy or France. We chose a local glass and looked out over the 360-degree views of the city. Just popping its Nazi head out was the submarine base built in World War 2 where the Germans beat Ken Adams in creating a terrifying bunker set. It is 245 metres in length, 162 metres in width and is 9 metres thick. It recently opened as a light and sound show of the work of Gustav Klimt.

For dinner that evening we initially had numerous options until we realised most were closed, but my friend struck gold with Loco by Jem’s. It’s in the part of Bordeaux that comes after the glorious architectural wonder of the centre, so it’s concrete chic. We arrive to an entirely empty restaurant until a bunch of Brits come in. I am immediately suspicious of all Brits these days and worry we could have made a terrible mistake. If they sing the praises of Boris Johnson, I feel my only reasonable response would be to flip tables at them.

The food at Loco was something of a revelation as far as tasting menus go even though the  restaurant has some strange ideas about how we’d like our food presented. Bread and butter arrives, but the bread is placed daintily on some twigs, even though the twigs are placed daintily on a plate. Why twigs? Who ever thought this was an idea worth pursuing? Why not lob some bread in a coffee cup they found in a bin? How about soup in an old can of Dulux? I’m sure that’s happened. For €41, we had an amouse-bouche, two entrees, a main and pudding. The main was sea bass adorned with a few slivers of smoked eel. Having never eaten eel before, my fussy side wanted to fling it out a window, but my experimentation paid off and it turns out that eel is far tastier than I could have imagined. The pudding came in numerous components, part brownie, part ice cream, part giant biscuit which all mashed together was very good. The service was friendly, attentive and casual, the Brits weren’t lovers of the Prime Minister in a bad wig and we left feeling satisfied, despite the slightly bizarre twig thing. I can live with that if the food leaves you feeling happy inside.

Despite visiting Bordeaux in February, a terrible time of year, when much is closed or opens when it feels like it, I’d advise anybody to go. It’s a stunning city that is a genuine pleasure to walk around and explore. The food is of a high standard and if you find yourself with nothing to eat, the cream puffs at Dunes Blanches Chez Pascal will keep you not just alive, but in a state of rapture. Or you could just visit when everything is open. No matter what, you won’t be disappointed.