This morning we were to pick up our lease car near Bordeaux Airport at 10am. The thought of dragging suitcases to a bus stop, riding for an hour to the airport then finding the rendezvous point was quite dispiriting. I tried the Uber app on my phone and it worked perfectly. The driver picked us up punctually at our door and delivered us to the location by 09:15. It was quite a long way. Like many Uber drivers, he was highly educated and had an interesting background.
Our brand new Citroen C4 Diesel, with 000003km on the clock. Actually, it’s not a lease, it’s a purchase contract which is cancelled when we return the car in Nice. We then forfeit our deposit, which works out to about AUD75 per day, fully insured, all costs included except fuel. Red plates are a giveaway. It’s registered in my name.
We cruised down the A63 toward Biarritz at 130km/h mostly, 110 when it rained, stopped a few times to fill the car with diesel, consult the French owner’s manual about how to retract les retroviseurs, eat our abricot chaussons from the patisserie, and 3 times to pay tolls. The GPS is apparently a Tom Tom. Works well. She is Camille. The car has a CD player, something of a relic nowadays. We played Anne’s Irish music CD from Derry, and arrived in Biarritz after 200km at about 1pm. It had stopped raining by now and was sunny.
Our plan had been to stay here at the Hotel du Palais, but somehow they lost our reservation, and had no rooms available.So we ended up here, at the Hotel Au Bon Coin, about 8 minutes walk from the beach. It’s excellent. We scored chambre # 1, a wheelchair accessible room again, with plenty of space. We didn’t score the wheelchair accessible parking space out front.The beach was fairly crowded, getting more so as the tide came in. We had a gelato.We walked up to the lighthouse and I climbed it. Anne is down there, visible on one of the seats, just right of centre. Hotel du Palais is at top right.White and blue china shards found on the way to the lighthouse. Anne often finds these in various places, always white and blue. Perhaps they are from some lost civilisation.Then we walked to the other end, passing this sculptor at work. We had another gelato.
Panorama of the Plage Port Vieux
By now it was nearing 7pm, time for dinner. We returned to a Galette restaurant we’d seen on Rue de Port-Vieux. Anne’s was an “Azur”, mine was a “Basquaise”.
In Basque country, dining Breton.View from our table. Biarritz has a completely different feel to Bordeaux, more like Nice, with distinctive architecture. Unlike Nice, it has sandy beaches and surf.Nutella is a staple here in France, Sangria is a staple just over the border in Spain.Elegant apartments on the way to the lighthouse
