Lavie Maison: Studio avec Jardin

Push open the door and the studio opens onto its own slip of garden — a patch of Bordeaux sky, a small table, room for a morning coffee in the sun.

Inside, twelve square metres are used well. A proper kitchen, blackout curtains for late mornings, the coffee machine humming before you've quite woken up. Pets welcome, if you mention them first.

Les Chartrons wears its old wine-merchant bones lightly. Wander down rue Notre-Dame on a Sunday and you'll hit the marché des Chartrons — oysters, cheese, a glass of white before noon.

Made for two, or one traveller who wants space to think. What you'll remember is the garden — that unlikely pocket of outside, kept just for you.

Step out and the rue Notre-Dame runs straight ahead, flanked by antique dealers who prop their chairs on the pavement by 10h — a gilded mirror here, a set of oyster forks there. The stone is pale, the buildings low, and the wind off the Garonne carries a faint note of oak from the old chai warehouses that gave le quartier its name.

Sunday belongs to the marché des Chartrons along the quai. Get there before 11h for the cannelés at Baillardran's stand and a glass of white from a Blaye vigneron who'll pour it into a plastic cup without ceremony. L'équipe drinks their coffee at Café Napoléon on place du Marché, two euros standing at the zinc.