Musée d'Aquitaine - Bordeaux

I am currently over a week behind on this blog because I'm absolutely terrible, so I'm going to try to catch you all up on the fun that's been happening over the past week. Believe me. There's been a lot.

Last Saturday, I made the short 15-minute tram trek to Musée d'Aquitaine in the centre-ville to meet up with my two friends, Brendan and Meredith. We had a project due that following Monday, and we were supposed to highlight something that was a big part of Bordeaux life. At first, we were going to do it on chocolate, but we figured it'd be much cooler to just go to the museum and learn a little bit more about the history of the city. There'd be plenty of time to eat chocolate later.

The gorgeous museum from the outside.

Being the history buff that I am, I was pretty stoked to see that the museum had exhibits dating back to the prehistoric ages.

Just hanging out with Mr. Bones.

After the museum's extensive section on the prehistoric origins of Bordeaux, it had a nice collection of Gallo-Roman pieces like this one.

Dat @$$ doe.

Hug me, brotha!!!

Big wheel keep on turnin'.

I'm on a boat.

Our presentation was primarily going to focus on Bordeaux in the Middle Ages, specifically the religious influences on the development of the city. And of course, we had to touch a little bit on the early commerce, which was basically just the trading of wine and, unfortunately, slaves.

In chains.

My favorite part of the entire museum was probably the section on Bordeaux in the more modern ages. I personally also found this part the most humbling, since it really went into detail about the slave trade back then. I mean, the picture speaks for itself.

Haunting words.

This passage reads: "Taking a look at the bridge, I saw a boiling cauldron and black men chained together, face grief-stricken ... I asked them if these white men with horrible red figures and long hair men would eat me."

It just reminded me how far along we've come as a society when it comes to addressing the rights of mankind, but at the same time, there's still much left to be done. Here's hoping that one day, future generations will visit museums and see exhibits of our time and see not just iPhones and MacBooks, remnants of our current time, but something more – something actually worth remembering.

And because trying to read an entire museum in French was so draining, Brendan and I were starving afterwards. Kimberly and Adena conveniently showed up at the museum to work on their project as well, so when we were finished doing our research, we grabbed kebabs.

Bro tip #74: Ask for the fries inside.

We vowed to ourselves that we wouldn't eat kebabs this much. They're about €4 anywhere you go (except this one sketchy place that sells them for €2... I ain't about that food poisoning tho') so we really should hold off on eating them, but hey, YOLO! Or as we'd say in French, "Pourquoi pas?"