578km (359 miles) SW of Paris, 549km (341 miles) W of Lyon

On the Garonne River, the port of Bordeaux, the capital of Aquitaine, is one of the world's most important wine-producing areas. It attracts visitors to the offices of wine exporters, most of whom welcome guests.

It may not exude the joie de vivre of Paris, but Bordeaux is a major cultural center and a transportation hub between southern France and Spain. Bordeaux is a city of warehouses, factories, mansions, suburbs, and wide quays 8km (5 miles) long. Now the fifth-largest city in France, Bordeaux belonged to the British for 300 years and even today is considered the most "un-French" of French cities.

With a population of some 650,000, much of greater Bordeaux looks seedy, but some urban-renewal projects are in the works. The early 21st century will not be the most scenic time to visit Bordeaux. The streets are mangled, thanks to the construction of a new network of aboveground trams, scheduled for completion in stages before 2009, and scaffolding covers many of the city's 18th- and 19th-century buildings. But all of this is leading to a welcome transformation of the city's historic core into one of the great urban aesthetic triumphs of western France.