I recently spent time in Bordeaux, France on vacation. I had used Claude before for research and website tasks, but this trip turned out to be my first real test of using AI as a practical travel companion. It worked better than I expected, and in ways I did not anticipate.
Getting there: taxi or tram?
It started before I even landed. Flying into Bordeaux-Mérignac (BOD), I asked Claude to compare my options for getting to my hotel in the city center: taxi versus the tram. Within seconds I had a side-by-side comparison — taxi would run €35–55 and take 30–45 minutes door to door, while the tram (Line A) cost €1.70, ran every 10–15 minutes, and dropped me within a two-minute walk of the hotel. Claude even told me where to buy the ticket at the airport and flagged that luggage space on the tram can be tight during busy hours. I took the tram and put the savings toward some terrific meals and wine! It was exactly as described.
Planning the week with a CityPass
My first stop after getting settled was the Tourist Office to pick up my Bordeaux CityPass — a 96-hour card covering unlimited tram and bus travel plus free entry to over 20 museums and monuments, including the Cité du Vin, Les Bassins des Lumières, the CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art, Tour Pey-Berland, Porte Cailhau, and the Musée d'Aquitaine. With a booklet full of sites and five days in the city, I asked an AI assistant to help me group them into a logical day-by-day plan — Sunday anchored around the 10:30 AM mass at Cathédrale Saint-André followed by Tour Pey-Berland and the Musée des Beaux-Arts; Monday covering the Musée d'Aquitaine, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, and La Grosse Cloche; Tuesday taking in the Cité du Vin and a walk through the Chartrons; and Wednesday as a day trip by train to Saint-Émilion. It clustered sites by neighborhood to avoid crisscrossing the city and flagged which venues had restricted hours or needed advance booking. For each day it also generated an interactive walking map with the stops pinned in order, suggested arrival times, and notes on each site — how long to allow, what not to miss. What would have taken an hour of cross-referencing a map with opening times took a few minutes, and I had something I could glance at on my phone as I walked.
A morning walk: Cité du Vin to the Chartrons
One morning I asked Claude to plan a walkabout from the Cité du Vin (after visiting of course!) south to the Chartron neighborhood. Rather than just giving me a list of streets, it laid out a route on an interactive map with five stops and notes for each — starting along the Quai de Bacalan with views of the Pont Chaban-Delmas, continuing down Cours du Médoc past old wine warehouse facades, onto the Quai des Chartrons riverfront promenade with its 18th-century négociant mansions, then inland to Rue Notre-Dame (Bordeaux's antique dealer row), and finishing at the CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art housed in a 19th-century colonial warehouse. The whole walk was about 2.5 km at a leisurely pace. Claude's tip to grab a coffee riverside at one of the Quai des Chartrons cafés on a May morning turned out to be excellent advice.
Wine recommendations at the table
Bordeaux being Bordeaux, wine was part of every meal. This is where having Claude on hand turned out to be unexpectedly useful — not in a shop, but sitting at a restaurant table faced with an unfamiliar menu and a wine list in French. Of course I used this in conjunction with the server's recommendations, but it was helpful to guide the conversation.
At lunch at L'Envers du Décor in Saint-Émilion, I photographed the wines available by the glass from the menu and told Claude what I was ordering: monkfish with Provençal sauce. It came back immediately with a specific recommendation — the Les Délices d'Apollon 2023 Graves — and explained why: a Sauvignon Blanc/Sémillon blend from Graves has the acidity and slight mineral character to complement firm, meaty fish, and the herbal and citrus notes would work with the tomatoes, olives, and herbs in a Provençal sauce without being overwhelmed. It even flagged the Château Turcaud Bordeaux Blanc as the best-value runner-up.
What I did not expect was how the conversation continued from there. I had not heard of monkfish before and asked Claude what it was — it explained the texture (firm, meaty, often compared to lobster), the sauce, the typical ingredients. Then I saw soufflé on the dessert menu and asked about that too. Within the same conversation, Claude had become a combination sommelier and French menu translator. Thsi turned out to be the very best meal I had on the whole trip!
The pattern repeated at other meals. I would describe what I was eating, send a photo of the wines by the glass, and get a considered recommendation with enough context to understand the reasoning — not just a name, but why that wine worked with that dish. It made ordering feel less like guessing.
What I took away from this
I have used AI assistants for technical work — signal processing, research writing, website edits — but this trip showed me the value in small, practical, real-time questions. None of these were sophisticated queries. They were exactly the kind of thing you might ask a well-traveled friend who happened to know the Bordeaux tram map, the neighborhood layout, and French wine appellations.
The friction of travel — unfamiliar city, unfamiliar transit, unfamiliar wines on a restaurant menu — is mostly a knowledge problem. Having a tool that can answer specific, contextual questions instantly and accurately changes the experience in a quiet but meaningful way. I expect I will travel differently from now on.