Well, as I said, it was Thursday morning in Bordeaux. We had to get to Toulouse by 6am on Friday, which gave us about 24 hours to play with. We had seen everything we wanted to see in Bordeaux. The original plan was to head back and stay in Toulouse, but we weren't sure that it was worth getting a hotel room since we'd have to leave at like 4am to catch our plane. So, we decided to drive around all day, and then drive all night to get to the airport at like 4am and catch our plane. It worked out pretty good.
The day started out a little grumpy for me. I had bought more stuff than I could reasonably pack into my luggage, so I needed to go buy another bag. Dave slept a lot later than I did, so I woke up early and walked around to find a place to get a new bag. Of course, all the stores were like two miles from the hotel, and of course (being France) nothing was open at 9am, and of course it started to rain. So I was pretty annoyed. But I eventually found an open store, but a bag (and a 40F umbrella), and got back to the hotel.
Of course Dave was still asleep. But we got ready and then we checked out of the hotel. We had a pretty ambitious schedule, and I didn't think that we would get to it all. I was even a little worried that we might miss our plane. As it turns out, we had plenty of time.
We started off by driving west to the beach. This was the first time I had driven in France. We knew that there was going to be a lot of driving involved that day, so I finally got around to taking a turn. Dave got to read the map. We drove to the beach town of Arachon. There wasn't anyone there, probably because it was grey and drizzling. Again, we both got wet. We didn't stay very long. The main goal was to just see the Atlantic Ocean. Dave was intrigued by the idea of seeing the Mediterranean and the Atlantic in the same trip. We had lunch in a seafood place on the beach.
Click here to see some pictures of Arachon.
After lunch, we headed a bit further south to a place called "Dune de Playa", which for some reason is alternately known as "Dune de Pilat". It is the largest sand dune in Europe. That didn't sound too exciting to me, but Dave liked the kitch idea. It was sort of like seeing the world's largest ball of twine. "It would be stupid not to go!" he said. So we went.
I must admit, it was a pretty big sand dune. It is so big that the term 'sand dune' isn't really even appropriate. Of course, it wasn't the biggest sand dune in the world, just in Europe, so it wasn't as impressive as it could have been.
Click here to see some pictures of the Dune de Playa.
It was cold and wet and raining when we got there, and I was still thinking that we might run out of time, so I wasn't sure that wasting time on this place was wise. We scaled the summit, which wasn't easy. By the time we got to the top, by cheap umbrella had been ruined. It tore itself to shreds in the wind. I was very annoyed. I didn't expect a 40F umbrella to last all that long, but I expected more than a hour out of it! I left Dave at the summit and went to wait in the gift shop.
As we were walking back to the car, I got mad at my broken umbrella (because I was still getting wet), so I jumped up and down on it and threw it in the trash. Dave responded by buying me a new umbrella. After that I felt better. Of course, it immediately stopped raining.
The next stage in our journey was to travel all the way south to the corner of France, Spain, and the Atlantic. This is known as the Basque region, because the people there aren't Spanish or French, they are Basque. The Basque are a very interesting group of people. They have lived in that area since before the Romans came, and they speak a language that is unrelated to any other language on the planet. Some say that they are the survivors of Atlantis, and they swam to the Spanish coast after their continent sank. I don't think a lot of people believe that though.
We decided to go to the city of Bayonne, which is a little inland of the big coastal city of Biarritz. Although Biarritz is more well known, we decided to go to Bayonne because it was a little closer, and because the tour book said that it was more 'Basque'. Biarritz is more of a flashy, movie-star type of place for rich people, and doesn't have the same local flavor.
Bayonne was quite nice (despite being the birthplace of the Bayonnette). And, like Albi, we thought that if we had had more time, we should have stayed there a night or two. We walked around and bought some chocolate at a local chocolateer. The tour book said that Basque chocolate is some of the best in the world. It was pretty good, but it wasn't as good as the Belgian chocolates I had in Brussels. We looked at the river for a while, and then ate some crepes as a snack. I had a much better time in Bayonne than I did in Arachon, probably because it wasn't raining.
Click here to see some pictures of Bayonne.
After eating our crepes, and figuring out where we had parked (those European streets are soooo confusing), we headed inland along the border with Spain. We had hoped to travel through the Pyrenees, but the highway we were on was about ten miles north of the foothills, so we didn't see much.
We stopped for dinner at the city of Pau. Pau is an old city that used to be popular as a resort for the rich way back in the 1930s. It was pretty, but there wasn't all that much to do there. We walked around and had dinner.
Click here to see some pictures of Pau.
After dinner, it started getting dark. But we were ahead of schedule. We still had about 8 hours to drive the 2 hours to Toulouse. So, we decided to make a detour and go to the city of Lourdes. Lourdes certainly was something, let me tell you. It is a perfectly fine little French city, but the reason people go there is for the Grotto.
It seems that in 1858, a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous was hanging out in a small cave when she saw a vision of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary told Bernadette that the water in the cave had healing powers and that she should make it a shrine. The Catholic Church made Bernadette a saint, and now Lourdes gets 5 million visitors a year who come to pray, drink cave water, and get healed. The city has more hotels than any city on France except Paris.
I wasn't sure that it would be worth it to make that trip, but it was. We got to Lourdes at about midnight and we expected it to be dead. If we hadn't read in the tour book that the grotto was open 24 hours a day we would've skipped it. We drove into Lourdes and everything seemed fine, until we got near the area that the grotto is in. And then boy! It's like what would happen if Jesus and Las Vegas had a child! There are row after row after row of brightly lit, tacky-as-all-get-out shops that sell everything (and I mean everything with the Virgin Mary on it. Now, I would expect that tourists might want a little Virgin Mary statue, but do people really need a snow-globe containing a plastic St. Bernadette and filled with cave healing water? The funniest thing that we found was an ashtray with the Virgin Mary on it! We decided that since Lourdes is a place of healing, perhaps you won't get lung cancer if you use the holy ashtray when you smoke! I don't think words can describe what that place was like.
It was also a zoo filled with tourists. The place was pretty packed with worshippers. And this was midnight! I shudder to think what that place must look like during the day. We bought a few Virgin Mary trinkets (including the ashtray) and headed on in. inside the gate things were much more serene and pious. We walked past a whole row of like 50 spigots that were connected to the blessed water. Some people were filling up 20 gallon buckets with the stuff. Maybe they were manufacturing snow-globes.
After the spigots comes the grotto. It was actually quite nice, as grottos go. There was also an area where you could light a candle. Some people had lit candles that were the size of small trees! They must have needed three or four people to set them up. I was pretty excited about the whole thing, but Dave and I were respectful of everyone's beliefs and tried not to make a scene.
Click here to see some pictures of Lourdes.
By this time, it was getting late, so we got back in the car and drove to Toulouse. We almost ran out of gas on the way. They don't have gas stations in France at every exit like they do in the US, and the ones that do exist are usually closed at night. But we made it. We got to the airport about an hour before we needed to, but we were pretty exhausted. We got on the plane, and (after a quick stop in Amsterdam), we headed home.
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