Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Sunday 11/13: Exploring Saint Jean de Luz

I woke up at 8:10am when my phone went off. Alison texted me to say that her bus hadn’t come (it was supposed to arrive at 7:50am) and so I called her to find out the plan. She decided to take a taxi to Tyrosse (which cost her €10), where we met at the train station. From there we headed to St. Jean de Luz—which is a town on the coast that’s about 40 minutes away.
Since neither of us had eaten breakfast, our first stop was a patisserie! I got a pain aux raisins and she got a long pastry with chocolate inside. We headed toward the church while munching and then strolled down random streets. Not much was open (it was only 9:45am), but we just looked around. We wanted to find the beach, but we ended up getting lost. That was fine, though, because we found a sign that said “Cinéma” and we thought we might as well go see what was playing.

Unfortunately all the showings were in the evening and we were only staying until 4:15pm. So, we left and eventually found our way to the beach.


Photo: The beach at Saint Jean de Luz




By this time it was starting to warm up considerably (and I was very thankful because I wore my sundress and flip flops…and it was a bit chilly this morning) and there were blue skies and sun.We decided to continue to wander around the streets for a while and go back to the beach after lunch.

Photo: The Harbor



Since it was now around 11am, more shops were opening up. We stopped in a chocolate shop (amazing—huge bars of all different kinds of chocolate just stacked all over the place!) and we ended up buying a piece of dark chocolate with caramel bits in it.

Photo: The chocolate shop

We happened to be walking past the church and were spotted by the two assistants we had met at the orientation in Dax! It was such a coincidence—we had no idea they were visiting St. Jean de Luz! So, we stopped to chat for a while and decided to meet up after lunch at the beach.

Alison and I wandered around looking for a restaurant that served pizza and we ended up finding a nice one that had a pizza for €8 (definitely more than I would normally pay, but I hardly ever go out, so this time I decided to splurge). We had a lovely meal (very filling) and plenty of free water. I love it when they put a whole bottle at the table—sometimes they frown at you if you don’t want to buy bottled water.

Photo: Lunchtime!








After lunch we went to the beach and found a nice place to lie down. It was so sunny and warm! I was really glad I wore my sundress! The other assistants—Iris and Gabie—(and their friend, Jessica, an assistant from Bordeaux who we'd never met) came down for a while to hang out. They were catching an earlier train, so we didn’t get to talk with them for very long.

Photo: Jessica, Me, Gabie, & Iris

It was lovely just relaxing on the sand, listening to the waves. We stayed there until 3:15pm, when we decided to visit the church because it was finally open. It’s a beautiful church, built by the fisherman who lived in St. Jean de Luz. The ceiling was built in the same way as the bottom of a boat because the fishermen were only familiar with building boats, not churches!


Photo: Inside the church







On our way to the train, we stopped the pâtisserie where Alison had gone the last time she visited St. Jean de Luz. She knew they had amazing pastries, so we headed directly there.


Photo: The beautiful pastries






Alison got an almond cream croissant and I got a piece of the traditional Gâteau Basque (a sweet crust, filled with cherries). Delicious!!

Photo: YUM!!!


We took the train back to Tyrosse (arriving around 5pm) and spent the rest of the “afternoon” working on lesson plans. I hadn’t done any work for my classes, so I had a lot to do. We ate dinner with my host family (tomato soup!) and then returned to our lesson planning. We had a good time listening to kids songs that I might use in my classes! Tonight Alison is staying over and we’re heading to bed early-ish (11pm) because we’re both tired and I have to teach early tomorrow.

To see more photos from this weekend, check out this link:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2158699014292.2101305.1451010052&type=1&l=8b1d7413c5

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