Wednesday, August 24, 2011

End of Week 1- Shem


A full week has come and gone and it has been jam packed. I will be completly honest in saying that I have a hard time keeping up with Andrea. She has some incredible energy thoughout the day and I get most of my energy at night. So of course she pushes me throughout the day to keep going so that we do not waist a minute.

After yesterday; aquarium, surfing and fireworks you would think that we would want a day to relax and just kind of take it in but we didnt or at least we tried not to.

We went to surf early but it was ruined by the tides. Biarritz is very tide sensitive with windows all throughout the day. For example I paddled out in a fairly high tide and within an hour there was more than 50 yards of new beach that was not there when I paddled out, really bizzare. This killed any chance of surf for the next 5 hours.

After comming home, We had read a brochure for these caves (Les Grottes) that seemed really cool because there are cave paintings that date back to B.C. along with arrow heads and small sculpted bison that have been found here. It is also home to a creature not human nor animal called the Laminik (If I remember right) that kind of cought our interest as well. which is also the home of over I think 70 different kinds of bats, the most found in any part of the world, oddly enough that's one of the reasons Andrea wanted to go. We actually made plans to do this the day before but when asking about the bus and how to get out to the caves (les grottes) everyone told us to stick around in town because of the free concerts and fireworks.

It ends up the buses out to the caves are very infrequent, like twice a day infrequent with only 1 returning bus after 5 pm. Needless to say we had missed the bus that would have taken us to the caves and back in time in order for us to return our rented bikes and board so, we were not able to go, so if anyone ever goes out there they'll have to let us know how it was.

So we decided on plan 'B' which was to go to Hossegor home to one of the biggest surf contests in Europe, also said to be the Pipeline of Europe. So we looked at bus schedules and this may be of help to anyone coming out here, the bus system in Biarritz is very limited if you want to go anywhere out of Biarritz.

Although Hossegor is roughly less than 25 kilometers from Biarritz you would think with 2 people that just did 80 kilometers 2 days prior would be able to handle this small ride. WRONG! Our skinny little no butts were so sore from Sunday it felt as if out butt bones were bruised, seriously! Just ridding down the street I had to adjust myself several times on the rock hard seat to minimize the pain, it was pathetic. Plus with a surfboard in hand and cars zooming past it seemed that the bus would be the best option. Come to find out the only bus that was going to Hossegor was leaving in an hour and it had one transfer in order to actually get there making the trip over an hour long. Also, the only bus coming back from Hossegor would be roughly 30 minutes after we would have arrived there. The guy that was explaining the hours to me (it was very confusing) just looked at me and said, ''Ah, don't go it's not worth it''. This was obvious but maybe he felt like we were the kind of Americans that wanted to push the limits and do it anyways. Though motivated to go we didn't.

With all of our best layed plans put to rest by obvious bad planing, I guess that's one good reason to have some kind of itenerary, we decided to just surf and hang out. We had a very relaxing rest of the day with small waves, really good weather and great water temp.

We decided to eat out our last night and give Biarritz another chance in the restaurant area as our first experience was just ok. So we walked for quite a bit until we saw a restaurant with a ton a of people. In fact the restaurant was so busy they actually owned the building that was across the alley way just so they could use that location for more seating. Andrea had the Basquise chicken (grilled chicken with a tomato sauce on top) with fries and I had Paella. I had never had or even heard of this before but it is kind of like spanish rice with mussels, shrimp, a full chicken leg and chicken bits that were super moist, bacon and bits of saussage. They served it with lemon wedges that you squeeze over it, it was so good! The best part is that Andreas meal and mine both came out to 19 Euro which has been unheard of on this trip unless we make our own food. The restaurant is called the Palmier, in fact I'm going to yelp! it right now.

The day was topped off with a gouffre (waffel) which was amazing. French waffels are not like what we have in the states they are made with a thick dough that is alomst like bread dough which they spread across the waffel iron with a spatula and this is typicaly eaten for dessert not breakfast. I had mine with nutella, whip cream and pralines, very good.

This was our last day in Biarritz and with everything we had planned or not planned we would not have changed a thing.

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