Biarritz

Wednesday, we packed up our belongings and walked up the hill to the train station - bit cooler today, but still a sweaty job.  We got the express to Bayonne which is just outside of Biarritz.  We had an hour and a half to kill at Bayonne, so found ourselves some lunch nearby the station - cheesecake for me and Tom and a local dense almond cake thingy for Matt.  Everyone in Bayonne was dressed in white and red, something was going on...we looked it up - only the largest festival in France - over a million people land there each year for 4 days of festivities.  We looked around stalls and made a vague plan to return, to find out what it was all about.

We got the train to Biarritz and then a bus to as close to our hotel as we could get before wheeling our very loud suitcases through the streets of Biarritz to our hotel.  Immediately we got the vibe for Biarritz.  We had read up on the place, apparently it was the place to go to in the 1920s/1930s, but then the Cote D'Azur took over and it went into decline until the 1990s when the surfers found it.  We were expecting it to be slightly shabby - oh no, not at all. Everywhere was immaculate, the people (of course) beautiful and it had a really good vibe (even better when 3 Brits aren't wheeling really noisy suitcases down the middle of the street).  We found our hotel, it also has a really cool vibe about it. Everything was rattan / macrame / earthy and the air conditioning was silent - yahhhhhhhoooooo.

We had showers and then headed out for a panaché to refresh and then for a little look in the cool looking shops.  The town is proud of its art deco heritage, there were lots of souviner shops with art deco style goodies - Matt fell in love with a door matt of all things. 

Matt knows a Japanese translator who lives near Biarritz, so he got some recommendations from her for tea and we headed to one of them - Casa Juan Pedro, right on the sea's edge.  We had to queue  for half an hour - but looking at the menu, fresh sea food and moules and prices, very reasonable, and the fact the queue did seem to move, we decided to wait it out.  It took 30 minutes to get seated, but we got served straight away so that was fine.  We had a plate of crevette brochettes to start with and then Tom and I had moules and Matt had a plate full of large grilled gammas for mains.  All washed down with a litre of white wine.  It was all delicious.  Even more so, because on the table sat next to us was Leo a nearly 3 year old playing with his cars who sort of adopted us.  

We tried to speak to him - but every time we tried he would say 'non', but he wasn't shy and we had fun playing with him. Made our night, in fact we decided it was more fun to stay there than to go home to watch England play in the world cup semi finals.  We got back just in time to watch us score and then mess up and loose.

Thursday, we got up around 9 and headed to Café Colombus for breakfast (a memory from Canada) where we all had a croque monsieur.  Bit cloudy and drizzly this morning, so we decided to have a useful morning and gathered up all our dirty, sweaty clothes and headed to the Laverie.  The Laverie just happened to be in a hip area of the city with a big market, a big kitchen shop, and a Carrefour City.  We put our clothes in and went for an explore.  The big kitchen shop did have moulds by my favourite mould maker (Scrap Cooking who are French) but didn't have anything useful unfortunately.  Went to Carrefour City for a drink and then headed into the market - which was rammed full of people and the most amazing produce.  Fruit, veg, bakeries, butchers, ham, fromage, you name it they had it and it all looked amazing.  We had found our breakfast spot for the rest of our stay.

We put our clothes in the dryer and headed out again, found an estate agent and found our dream home - just outside of Biarritz with swimming pool, 5 bedrooms and plenty of garden.  We have all taken to this town immediately and in a perfect world, would quite like a house here!

By the time we got our laundry back to the hotel, the sky had cleared and it was hot and sunny again.  We headed out for lunch - crepes/galette and then headed to the Aquarium for the afternoon.  Was in a very funky art deco building.  We saw plenty of fish, a couple of lovely turtles, seals (phoques in French!) 2 films, we were in there quite a while and get this - we got out of the shop without buying anything, although there was a lovely crab for €180 which was tempting but a little too large.

We got back to the hotel and then got ready for an hour on the beach - just 3 minutes walk from our hotel.  Was a gritty beach, but the water wasn't too cold, we all went in, I only shrieked once, for a paddle.  Was pleasant and had to be done.

We went back to the hotel for a shower and then headed out to meet up with James - the husband of the Japanese translator Matt knows - she had had to go back to Japan suddenly, but Matt had met James before, so we met up for a drink.  He is half British half French, grew up in Durham.  One of the most chilled men I have met, was a nice drink and meet up, shame we didn't have longer.  

We then headed back into town in search of dinner and ended up in Café de la Place.  We all went for the menu du jour - as it had local specialities on it.  I had a trout tart, followed by Poulet de Basque and Mousse au chocolat, the boys had Piquillos (cod stuffed peppers) and Tom had Chipirons (mini squid) for his main and apple tart for his dessert - all very good and of course, washed down with wine.

Friday, we got up and went to the markets for breakfast - more drizzle this morning, but it was still warm.  Pain au raisin for Matt (he was very happy as hotel breakfasts don't include pain au raisin which has made me wonder if it is a traditional breakfast food?!)  Tom and I went for Chausson aux pommes.  We then went back in to find ourselves some sandwiches for lunch.  We then got the bus to Cité de l'océan - we got tickets to this place in combination with the aquarium.  It was a venue with lots of immersive experiences based around the sea.  We did a couple of virtual reality sessions - one diving with sharks, 2 lots of surfing, coral conservation.  There were lots of interactive games, a polar base experience, a ship in a storm and our most favourite a 5d film of a module out of control skidding and crashing into various environments - polar bears, over the mountains to penguins (?!) then skiing, and all sorts of things.  We were shaken, splashed, blown and whipped with a cable - it was great fun - could have done it all day it we were allowed.  

We walked down to the beach to have our lunch and then walked back to the hotel along the coast line (and via a bar for a panaché of course!).  Then to the hotel, for a shower. We all then went out independently to do some holiday shopping - didn't get much but had a wonderful ice cream - cassis with lots of big fat blackcurrants.

We then went to the roof top bar on top of the Aquarium for our evening panaché, we were going to stay there for dinner, but the menu was very limited and quite expensive, so we headed back to Casa Juan Pedro as we knew the food would be very good, we all had something different and it was very good.