Weekend of Adventures!

Sorry it's been a while, I had a very busy weekend and then was barely in my dorm all day today (which is never a bad thing)! On Saturday we had our first excursion with USAC, they were taking us to Basque country for a day! However, we kind of felt that just a day trip was a waste of a perfectly good weekend so Hanna, Chloe and I booked a hotel in Biarritz and stayed on by ourselves!

First we went to Bayonne, an old port city, and had a guided tour. We got to see the cathedral which was gorgeous, it seemed extremely high on the inside, but only because the nave was so small. The stained glass windows were also amazing, and all completely original apparently. The cathedral had a very rich history of decorations because the area of Aquitaine was under both French and English rule for periods of history. Most of the decorations were in tribute to Richard the Lionheart or other descendants of Eleanor of Aquitaine. I've seen a ton of churches in my time here already, but each one is different! The cathedral in Bayonne had exceptionally interesting stained glass windows. After the cathedral we were shown around some of the oldest areas of Bayonne, where the ports used to be. Bayonne actually used to have a lot of canals, just like Venice, but the city's been built up too high now. Another interesting fact- Bayonne and Biarritz are supposed to have the best chocolate in France because Bayonne is the port where chocolate first entered France. I sampled some and I do have to agree!

After the tour everyone met for a gorgeous lunch provided by USAC, at a traditional Basque restaurant. The vegetarian mean was slightly different from everyone else's but we had a huge salad of local vegetables, and then a very light sort of tart with cooked veggies that was amazing, and after a traditional Basque cake that is very famous. It's more like a pastry than a cake, but it has this almond cream and oh my gosh it was so good! The food is definitely one of the best things about France, I don't think i'll be able to eat when I get home!

After lunch we had a little time for shopping, but only about 45 minutes to the girls and I power-shopped at Promod, rather successfully I may add :p I was all excited to see Promod because one of the women I work with at Banana had told me about it, and then today I realized that there is a Promod in Pau as well. Oh well it was fun to shop there!

It was a very quick trip to Biarritz, but when we got off the bus it was freezing!! The wind had really kicked up at the beach and it was cloudy, unfortunately not a beach day at all :( We decided to just go straight to our hotel and drop our stuff off, but the street where the hotel was wasn't on the map and we had no idea where to go! What made it worse is that we went into several shops to ask if anyone could point us in the right direction, and no one had even heard of the hotel. We were all starting to think that maybe our livers would be taken when we eventually got there but thanks to the internet we did find our way, and it was actually a lovely hotel!! We had three beds all crammed into one tiny room but the beds were really comfy and it was clean and the lady in the bar downstairs was nice! There were also two other groups of girls checking in at the same time which was good.

We dropped off our stuff and headed out to do some window shopping (Biarritz is very expensive), and got to see the drop-dead gorgeous views from above the beaches, even in cloudy weather! By the time we went out for dinner it had started raining, so our plan of bar hopping was squashed. But we had awesome pizza and then ran back to the hotel in the rain and watched the Simpsons in French!

The next morning we set out to visit the Musee du Chocolat, with the intention of stopping at a boulangerie along the way. Since it was raining we caught a bus, but apparently the buses in Biarritz don't announce what stops are coming up at all so we missed our stop by like... a few miles. We lucked into seeing a sign pointing out the direction of the museum when we got off the bus, and we figured we couldn't be too far so we set off on foot. Oh we were wrong. We wandered the suburbs of Biarritz for the better part of two hours. Luckily it stopped raining after about half an hour. We literally had absolutely no idea where we were, but eventually we did come to the top of a hill where we could see the ocean so we headed that direction. I literally don't even know how we ended up finding our way, but we did. And this was all on empty stomachs, and right before the museum we had to walk up an enormous hill. We were about to pass out, so when we saw the museum we went to the first bakery we saw and bought some sustenance before even crossing the street to the museum. We probably should have because guess what? The museum was closed on Sundays. Obviously, big disappointment. The museum of chocolate sounded like the greatest thing in the whole world! But we brushed it off because there was an amazing view of the ocean from that hill! We also found sort of the French version of a tiki bar overlooking the ocean, so we got to sit with coffee and real food for a while. There was no point getting mad that we had wasted all that time, the weather even seemed like it was clearing up!

Eventually we wandered back to town and did some window shopping, and stumbled upon an area called Port Vieux where there was some sort of street festival going on. There were huge long tables and benches down the middle of the whole street, and the restaurants on either side were serving at them and everyone was sitting together! It was really nice, we had a great lunch and as we were sitting there the sky completely cleared up! It even started to get really warm! So naturally we immediately changed into our swimsuits and beelined for the beach.

The beach was gorgeous! The water was too cold to swim but it was lovely just laying in the sand, the sun was really hot but it was very breezy! We laid out for long enough to get a nice little tan, then got some of the best ice cream ever, and we have sampled a lot of ice cream since we've been here! Biarritz ended up being a wonderful trip and an amazing weekend, but we did have to get back to Pau eventually. We took the bus to the train station (got off at the right stop this time) and were able to catch a train leaving only ten minutes later! These little weekend adventures have been some of the best times, I can't wait for more!