From the Atlantic shore over yonder...

Randi and I were again able to take advantage of the glorious French holiday schedule and drove to the Atlantic coast on Thursday (5/21) for a 4-day weekend.

On our way to the coast we drove parallel to the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains. With the heavy fog and densely green hills next to us, I couldn't help but think about the mystery of the Basque people...remembering what I had read in one of our travel books about their unknown origins. It is widely believed that they are descendants of some of the earliest human inhabitants of Europe. It is also believed that they have lived in or near their present location for at least four thousand years, a relatively small group of people surviving when many others were overwhelmed by invaders. This is because they had the dense forests of the Pyrenees to hide in. The fog kept getting worse and I started thinking while I was driving..."they're probably in there right now, watchin us"...scary bast*rds! That's a joke of course. I love the Basque people...right. :)

It took us 3h15m to get to Biarritz. After quickly checking in at the lovely Tulip Inn we immediately jumped back in the car to drive down the coast to see St. Jean de Luz. We had heard from a few different people to make sure we the charming little town. The street life and shopping there was very interesting. We really hope to get back there someday and see the inside of the church of St John the Baptist, where in 1660, Louis XIV married some chick from Spain. :) The church has tiered wooden balconies running along on each side that are referred to as 'Romeo and Juliet' style.

From there we made our first exit out of France and into Spain, with a quick stop into San Sebastian. As we crossed the border we had to pay two tolls...one to the French and a welcoming toll to the Spanish. As we approached the toll in Spain Randi and I were very happy to remember "buenos dias" and "muchas gracias"...feeling as though we had then mastered another language! The city of San Sebastian reminded me of Marseille, in it's age and condition. After walking the boardwalk there we found a small liquor with the thought of buying a bottle of Spanish wine. When I asked the old guy workin there if he had any rum, his eyes lit up and he said "rumma!"...and he lead us into the backroom. There he started to point to about 20 different types of rum..."rumma", "rumma", "rumma", "rumma". I tried to stop him at about the 4th bottle in...wanted to tell him "you had me at The Captain" but he was not to be denied. He recommended a bottle of Spanish rouge and also taught us our only Basque
translation ...that being to say "thank you" you say "escottikosko" (have no idea on that spelling). He was a very nice man and a great representative for that city.

We returned to Biarritz
that night and discovered
how really beautiful it is,
with all the lights along
the shoreline. We really
enjoyed our stay at the
Tulip Inn there.


The next morning, after a walk around the glitzy Biarritz shopping scene, we headed out for a long ride north along the Atlantic coast. Along the way we stopped in the surfing town of Hossegor for lunch and what appeared to be a bike riding mecca of Messanger for a little wine tasting. The bike trails in this area appeared to be extensive and well-kept, as we noticed them winding in and out of the forest along the way.

We pulled into Arcachon after about 4 hours of driving and checked into the Park Inn, right on the beach. The weather was sunny and warm, so we grabbed the beach chairs we brought along and unwound there with a bottle of wine. We found this to be the essence of Archachon...laid back and peaceful. There were a couple highlights of our stay there. One was walking upon a small bar with a live jazz band playing ("Caravan"). We met a woman there who told us how Toulouse was the headquarters of some secret underground music scene...we still haven't found it. She was very nice though and even provided me a couple of French band names to check out. Since then I did find "Arthur H" at the library here and he sounded like a French Frank Zappa...not good really. The real highlight of the trip was meeting up with my co-worker and new friend, Benoit Chauvin and his girlfriend Nadine at the impressive "la Dune du Pilat".
It is a giant dune...the largest in Europe. It measures over 350 feet high and like 2 miles long. Benoit has been a huge help to me, since my first day at the Sun office, in getting acclimated, learning the language and customs of the French and helping us plan and implement our travels around France so far.

Paris!

Ran and I made it to Paris for a quick weekend, having Friday, May 8th off for another French holiday. The beauty of that one was that I still don't know what it was for?? We took a one hour flight on Easyjet from Toulouse. It looks like they have $60 Euro roundtrips available...of course we paid about $130 roundtrip but we purchased them a week before leaving. We found a hotel that was just a few blocks from the Eiffel Tower. It was nuttin fancy but a good location, right near the Metro (Duplex) station.

We really were just focused on the Eiffel Tower and doing a bus tour of the city one day and then the Lourve most of the second day.

When we first arrived there in the inner city it was a lawless, shameless, madhouse!!


The first night we were there we were both tired from all the walking and air travel. We went to dinner that night thinking we may just call it an early evening. Randi's exact words were to me..."I can't walk anymore". Then during dinner we had a couple glasses of wine (actually vodka for me) and she says "let's just go look at the Eiffel Tower again" (it was right around the corner from where we were). Then when we got there we thought maybe we would take the elevator up but there was still a 45 minute wait for the elevator ride up. Then Ran says "let's just do the 1st section" (350 steps). Then we got to the first section, took a look around for five minutes and she says "where are the stairs for the second section" She's really something :) ...I wanted to say "wait, let me have a couple more vodkas first". So another 350 stairs we did...it was slightly exhausting but definitely worth it...great fun.


After that we found our second wind! So we went down, bought a bottle of wine and drank it on one of the large expanses of lawn nearby the Tower, with many other people. It was a beautiful night too. As you can see from the pic below, both the Eiffel Tower and us had "achieved illumination!" :) Randi looks so cute there too.


We felt like we did quite a bit and saw a lot for the two days we were there...but there is soooo much more to see and do there. We think are some of the first folks to discover this.

"Recalculating..."

Thought I should talk a little about the street signage and the driving practices here. It's not important but it's f'in ridiculous.

The signs for the streets are listed in French and Spanish but typically the actual street name is only found on the side of a building. What is shown in a more visible manner are signs telling you what towns or well-known loactions that street will lead to. So when you enter an intersection and/or roundabout my GPS is saying what road to take, in it's very monotone English voice but the actual road name is not displayed largely anywhere in the intersection. In the picture below, the actual street name is that small white sign, on the building,just to the left of the red traffic light...that doesn't help much. Instead these larger white signs give more of a general direction for all these different locations within Toulouse that I can head to. It's actually not too bad of an idea, if the street name was included on a larger sign.



Because of this we have seemed to have missed a lot of turns while we've been here. Our imitation of our GPS is it saying "recalculating". She seems just as frustrated doing all the recalculations as us. I half expect her to someday say "make a right, wait, not that one but... wait, ah, where's the street name!...this sucks!!!... recalculating"

Then the highway driving habits observed on our journey home from Provence seemed as though some emergency was occuring...like a medival fortress was on fire or the Capitole of Toulouse was under attack. Lot of bobbing an weaving, jockeying for very limited space. I've resisted using any universal hand gestures. Instead I mumble old English slang, still heard to this day I'm sure, when heading down the Kennedy into the great city of Chicago.

It's all about the weekends...

The first couple weeks here have been filled with mostly work and rain...but then our second weekend finally came. Even though it was still a wet weekend for the most part, we did make it over to CARCASSONNE!...I like saying it like a battle cry. It is, after all, the site of one of the finest medieval fortress cities in all of Europe.

The weather seemed to set the tone perfectly for the audio tour we took of the castle that day. We could imagine how imposing the fortress must have been and how difficult life must have been in the middle ages.


...unless of course you had reserved a room at the Best Western there.

The layout of the fortress still poses quite a challenge for young families who try to scale the walls.


Even though times have changed and society has made huge advancements since those times, Carcassonne has held on to some traditions there.


Here we are looking very comfortable, near the entrance of the fortress, even though it looked as though I can count almost 20 "murder holes" behind us, facing our way...that's what they call em.