Two Sounds

I walked into Bordeaux this morning. Six days from Saintes, the last of them through suburbs that gave no hint of what was coming. Then the streets narrowed, the buildings grew grander with every block, and the Cathédrale Saint-André stood up in front of me.

I went in. Through the exit door, as it happens, but the cathedral didn’t seem to mind. Inside it was cool and dim and almost empty. A father and his son were sitting near me, the boy maybe four, both of them calm in a way you don’t often see either of those ages manage. When they left, the father forgot his hat on the pew. Someone nearby leaned over and told him, quietly, and he came back for it. That was the loudest thing that happened. Pilgrims have been arriving at Saint-André for a thousand years, and the building has learned to say nothing when they do.

Six hours later I stood on the riverbank four hundred meters away and heard the loudest sound I have heard in years.

The Tour de France came into Bordeaux at sixty kilometers an hour, and the crowd met it with their hands. Thousands of people smashing the advertising barriers in a wave that ran along the river faster than the riders. It was deafening. You felt it in your chest before the peloton reached you, and then they were past, ten seconds of color, and the wave rolled on behind them toward the line.

Two sounds, one afternoon. A city that has been receiving tired travelers for a thousand years knows how to make both.

Paul Mercuri
Wake Up Here Founder

Read more stories