Biarritz, surf, little vaction town and RAIN!!!!!!
Trip Start
Jun 08, 2008
1
58
65
Trip End
Dec 08, 2008
Biarritz,
Aquitaine,
France
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Night trains, either you love them our you hate them. I had a night train from Marseille to Bordeaux and then I was to catch another 1 hour train to Biarritz later in the morning. Night trains can be a hit or a miss, my first night train was a disaster, my second was better and this one turned out to be the best. I fortually am traveling on a rail pass which means, since I am over the age of 26 I have to ride 1st class. (I know hard life) The difference between a 2nd class night train and a 1st class is EVERYTHING!!! The beds are nicer, the pillows are fluffier and the most important, there are less beds. 2nd class, 6 beds crammed into a little space, 1st calss, 3 sometimes 4. When I arrived onto the train I was put into a 4 bed sleeper, there was one guy already in there crashed, I stashed my bag and headed right to bed. I slpet right through the night which is really impressive being on a moving train for 7 hours.
I arrived in Bordeaux at about 7:00am and I needed to catch my connection at 9:00 which gave me the perfect amount of time to get a coffee and a muffin. (WOW, you are really getting the play by play here) I boarded the train and arrived to Biarritz shortly after 10ish.
Well, Biarritz is only one of those towns that is beautiful when the sun is shining and the surfers on the water. Lucky for me, it was POURING, and I mean it was getting hit with the biggest wind and rain storm one could imagine. Oh ya, first......
I HAD A HOTEL, NOT A HOSTEL BUT A HOTEL.
I checked into my HOTEL and was so happy to have my own bed, own shower own privacy. Biarritz has no hostel and I was happy for it. I was nervous to be a little solidary but in the long run it was one night and I was going to soak every second of it up.
Okay, back to it. It was raining, I put on the jacket and headed for the beach. They had the most incredible beach and with the storm that was hitting them hard it made the surf amazing. The guys were running out and hitting the waves. The kids were jumping into the waves in their wet suits. It was really cool to see. My camera was getting wet, really wet, I had to keep getting rid of the water that was on my lense. After about 3 hours I decided I had enough. I was hungary and needed something to eat, I didnīt realize when I was walking that nothing was open.
Biarritz is a summer town and I knew that coming into it but I didnīt expect that everything was going to be closed up for the winter. I did happen to find a really nice bakery to stop at.
My french is getting really good after spending close to a week trying to order things and get through to the locals. I was really surpised how much it comes back to you when you are forced to use it. I am far from fluent but I am defianlly getting better. I entered this bakery and tried to order in French. I was happy to say that the girls were more then impressed with my french. They were excited to hear where I was from and what I was doing in their town on such a rainy day. Her sister ended up living in Vancouver so we sat and talked for about half an hour. The problem was, they couldnīt speak that good of English so our conversation was slow but nice. I am getting good at understanding what they are saying, I can pick up every 2nd or 3rd word so that is the easy part, the hard part is forming a sentence back. I usually start in French, throw in some Engligh and disguise a little German in there and hope they wonīt notice. Either way it was fun and gave me a new look on the French people. Some of them could actually turn out to be quite freindly given the chance.
I sat and listened to the rain for the evening, watched some French TV, (I had already seen that episode of Friends so I got the gist of what was going on, Ironically, Fibi was trying to teach Joey French) and fell a sleep in my HOTEL room pretty early. I was only spending one night there, as much as I loved the HOTEL, it was too expensive to hang out there for much more and I donīt know if I could do another day in the rain.
The next day I was excited for, San Sebastian. People told me again, only go if it was sunny, not a lot to do if you canīt walk the city. They had the same forecast as Biarritz so I had my fingers crossed, I should have crossed the toes too, oops............
