promenade à velo

Friday, April 17: the epic bike adventure commences.
Maia and I met at the train station bright and early to catch our train to Bordeaux. Unfortunately, Ashton missed the morning one and had to come later because of bike complications. Better for her though because when we arrived 7 hours later it was pouring down rain. How encouraging. We were starving and frustrated so we got a kebab at a doner across the street from the train station and tried to make some plans. We were really tempted to book a hotel room for the night instead of camping because the rain was coming down in sheets.
Well, eventually we dragged ourselves out into the pouring rain, got on the tram and headed downtown to tourist information. From there things started looking up. We got information on all the bike paths and camp sites in Les Girondes (the region where we started our trip) and other helpful things, plus it stopped raining! So we went and rented our bikes, easy as pie, bought a tent and did grocery shopping. Things started off really well!
Once Ashton arrived and did her food shopping we headed to the campground. We had to take the tram quite a ways and then bike even further to get there. So we arrived and set up our tent. That first night we were super cold because it had rained all day so we didn't get much sleep.

Saturday, April 18.
To get on the bike path we had to head back into town in the morning. I also had to get some more bungees to hold all my stuff on my bike. Somehow we eventually successfully negotiated our way along the river and found the bike path, after turning around multiple times, but we made it! We stopped in a park to have some lunch: dried fruit, cheese, bread, and sausage. That's pretty much all we ate all week except when we got tired of it and decided to splurge on a restaurant. That day we biked about 60km! We ended up at Lacanau Lake, a small town between Bordeaux and the ocean. Our lists of campsites said there would be somewhere to stay there so we looked around but couldn't find anything. Finally we asked an old man with his family if he knew where a campsite was. He said nothing was open this time of year but he had a large back yard we could stay in. Kind of a strange situation, but they seemed like a nice family and we had nowhere else to go so we took it! He took us to their house and we set up our tent and had a little picnic dinner in the backyard.

Sunday, April 19.
In the morning we thanked the family for their hospitality and headed to Lacanau Océan. What a beautiful beach town! We watched the surfers and enjoyed walking through the sand before lunch. Tired of bread and cheese, we decided to go to a restaurant where we got croque monsieurs (yes, it's still bread and cheese, but at least it's warm and comes with a salad and fries!)
Then we left for Cap Ferret. That was a long day, with lots of countryside and lots of hills. We finally got to Cap Ferret, exhausted and kind of lost. The town was a very classy, snobby beach town and we just wanted to get out and set up camp, but unfortunately there wasn't any open tourist information... Well, we had our list of campsites so we asked someone in a bookstore and got vague directions. Though when we arrived at the first campsite, Le Truc Vert (The Green Thing), it was closed for the season. And it was starting to rain... We debated breaking in and camping anyways, though we thought that probably wasn't a good idea. However, we didn't have many other options and we were wet and tired so we started to scope it out to see if it was possible. Just as we were leading our bikes around back, a woman drove up and started talking to us. She explained to us how to get to another campsite in a nearby town called Claouey, so we figured we'd try our chances there. Well, we biked and biked some more, over some hills, through the forest, in the rain... FINALLY got to the campsite... and it was closed. Well, it was open for the season, but the reception was closed so we decided to just go in and find a spot for ourselves.

Monday, April 20.
In the morning we packed up camp as fast as we could and went to go take showers. It was so nice to finally be clean after three days of biking and camping. After the showers we started strapping all our stuff back on our bikes when a man came up and started asking where we had camped last night. Busted. Oh well, we just had to go pay which is fine.
We headed back to Cap Ferret to catch a ferry to the other side of the bay, otherwise we would have to bike all the way around the bay which would take at least another day or two. Though first we stopped to take a nap on the beach :) The first day I had gotten really sunburnt so every day after I coated myself in sunscreen each morning. Let me tell you, being coated in sunscreen + laying in the sand = scary looking sand monster lady. And not fun to brush off afterwards either... Well, at least the nap was nice!
We got back into Cap Ferret and bought our tickets for the ferry and had some time to wait so we stopped at a café near the dock. We had cocktails and watched children playing on the beach :) What a wonderful life!
The ferry took us across the bay to the most wonderful town of Arcachon! We basically fell in love with it right when we got there. It has beautiful houses and palm trees and beach, and everything amazing pretty much :) Plus the camping was great! They had a water slide and volleyball courts and a bowling green. Well, we didn't really do any of those things, but they were there! After setting up our tent we rode our bikes back down into town and had dinner on the beach. More sausage, bread, and cheese as usual. We had a little doggy friend staring at us the whole time trying to get us to feed him.

Tuesday, April 21 (Happy Birthday, Jordan!)
We decide to stay another day in Arcachon so we could see the town a bit more. We started the morning off visiting the cemetery. I've loved seeing cemeteries here in France, they're so interesting! Kind of cluttered and very eclectic. Every gravestone is different and they're all covered with little signs and nick nacks and flowers. It's rather ironic, but I would even describe them as more "lively" than cemeteries in the states.
After the cemetery we went into town and got on the internet at a café for a while to plan out the next part of our route and catch up with e-mails. I had an oreo "milkshake", which was really more like and ice shake... basically oreos and ice in a blender. meh. And I watched a kid watching power rangers dubbed in French...
Then we had the day to just wander around the town. We saw so many beautiful old houses. There's a park in Arcachon called Parc Mauresque, located at the top of a hill. From the park you can see out over the town, the beach, and the bay.
It was a beautiful day walking around and lying on the beach. Before going back to the campground we did some more grocery shopping and got some bottles of wine to enjoy back at the tent.

Wednesday, April 22.
We started our day off heading to the Dune de Pyla. It's GIANT!!!! We had to wait in a long line to climb the stairs to the top, but Maia decided to attempt to climb up the side without help from the stairs so we let her do that... It was Earth Day so there was a big event with lots of kids on top of the dune. The view from the top was amazing! We could see over the surrounding forests on one side, and the bay on the other. There was also a famous French singer there, Pascal Obispo, who we had never heard of but apparently he's a big deal...
The rest of the day was spent biking to our next campground in Mimizan.

Thursday, April 23.
All I wrote down in my agenda for this day was "biking, beach lunch, camping" Very eventful... Though while eating lunch at the beach some huge bug decided to chase Maia around so she was running in circles yelling, trying to get the bug to go away. That was entertaining. We had a topless sunbather staring at us...

Friday, April 24.
After an annoyingly hilly ride along the road (because the bike path just stopped) we arrived at our destination: Bayonne! Though it was rather anticlimactic. We were tired and frustrated because there weren't any bike paths and the tourist information was hard to find. Then when we were trying to get information about camping and biking they were very unhelpful and kind of rude. So we just decided to get some lunch and decide what to do from there. I had paëlla, which was really good, except that the shrip still had their eyes and legs and antennae and everything and I had to peel it all off... but the rice was good!
Well, Maia's knee was hurting really badly and the only way to get to Biaritz was along a hilly road and there wasn't any camping there anyways so we decided to head back to Bordeaux and spend a few days there.
In Bordeaux we went back to the campground we had stayed at before, set up camp, and passed out.

Saturday, April 25.
By this point we were tired and wanting our beds and a shower, but we decided to just go walk around Bordeaux and see what we could do. Unfortunately it was raining so things weren't much fun. We had pizza and spaghetti at a nice little Italian restaurant and spent as much time inside there before going to find an internet café. There wasn't much else to do in town in the rain so we got some bottles of wine and went and hung out in our tent until bed time.

Sunday, April 26.
Fortunately for us, we had a nice sunny day! We had reserved a tour of a vineyard in Pesac so we went there and got to see the cellars and had a wine tasting. Mmm... delicious! We had lunch in Pesac and wandered around a really cool street market and tried Canelés. Then we rode our bikes around the countryside looking at vineyards. My favorite was Chateau Smith Haut Lefitte (you can see pictures of its awesomeness on my facebook, album: epic bike adventure 4).
We went into town for dinner and ate at a wonderful French restaurant called Les Provinces. It was delicious and rather cheap for what we got! I had a chèvre salad (that's warm goat cheese), duck, and profiteroles for dessert (ice cream in a pastry covered in warm chocolate sauce). Yum! After dinner we walked around a bit and saw the city at night. Maia and I were tired so we went back to the tent while Ashton stayed out and took some more photos.

Monday, April 27.
Our train didn't leave till the afternoon so we just hung out in our tent for the morning because the weather was being crazy. It would pour for about 15 minutes and then get bright and sunny and warm, and then rain again. It was like that pretty much all day. When we finally dragged ourselves out of the tent we packed up and went to return our bikes and get on the train home! We had a bottle of wine each and chips, candy, and bread and cheese so we were happy campers for the 7 hour train ride. We finally made it home and were ready to start another week of madness that is the French educational system!