2013-08-06

Atlanthal - Biarritz - Anglet : 2013-08

We took a surfing trip to southwest France by Biarritz and Anglet (the "t" is pronounced) and stayed in the Atlanthal hotel. It was a great trip and the waves were perfect for my level of surfing. The hotel was a little pricy but we could walk to the beach in about 5 minutes, the rooms were nice, and they had great pools! The pools were all salt water and they had both indoor and outdoor. The indoor pool had a bunch of jacuzzi jets, was warm, and felt really awesome after surfing.

 My room (l) and a sign showing we surfed in a danger zone - cool.
The water was a great temperature and there were no rocks in the water. However, the beach was all small rocks which are more painful than they look (wear shoes if you can). It was a good trip for me as I haven't surfed in awhile and was actually able to repetitively get up on the board.
Three awesome salads at the hotel.

One night, we strolled into Anglet and ate at the Cap Marine (3 of 73 on Trip Advisor).  The food was great (my dish is shown above) and the evening was made better by the fact that we were out of the rain.

After our second day of surfing, we took a trip into Biarritz. Since we were caught in the rain the day before, we took the bus - it's only 1€. We ate at La Tireuse which is only 95 of 189 on Trip Advisor, but the atmosphere was cool and they served tapas and beer. And, once again, we were out of the rain so I was as happy as a lark (or clam since we were by the ocean).
 
After eating we walked around town a bit. We saw l'Église Sainte-Eugénie de Biarritz. There was a ship hanging inside the church which caught my attention - it's not the first ship I've seen in a church.


We took a stroll by a little beach which is in many pictures of Biarritz, walked out by Rocher de la Vierge, the War Memorial of Biarritz and the Musée de la Mer. I think we would have visited le Musée de la Mer but there was a big line (probably because it was raining). We did by this point have umbrellas which was nice! I was happy enough to see the building from the outside. It looked really imposing and strong and I liked the octopus on the front.


We also visited the Musée Historique de Biarritz which is in an old church - it was 4€, how could we pass it up? The coolest thing for me was seeing very old photographs of places we'd just seen walking around moments before.  The ticket, of course...

Our last supper was the other direction from the hotel (to the north) in a little Australian placed called  the Bilgola Café. This was one of those good finds from Trip Advisor (it's 1 of 73 in the area). And I could see why. The burgers received the best reviews - just look at that thing on the left! The pieces of bacon could have been a burger themselves. Delicious!


This was a great trip! Thanks to Petra and Celine for the good company.

No comments: