Bordeaux and the Atlantic Coast

We spend the last three days in a tiny, sleepy beach town called Le Porge on the French Atlantic coast. The town was unremarkable besides that we were well placed between the beach, several sights, the city of Bordeaux, and there were a ton of pizzerias. When we arrived to our tiny home accommodation, our hostess had a bottle of local wine waiting for us. The beach was pretty wild with great waves, but the weather was just a little on the cool side.

On day two we explored the Bassin d'Arcachon, a huge inland sea that is really calm and has tons of touristy stuff all around. We drove the road around it and made our way to the Dune de Pilat, the largest sand dune in Europe. Our Lonely Planet guide kind of made a big deal about it (we figured it was a pile of sand...) so we checked it out and climbed it. It really was fun, and very impressive! Best of all was running down the dune bare-footed, tons of fun! Running down the dune was Caity's favorite part of the trip so far. The dune has developed due to the geography of the area and the funneling of winds/waves/physics and stuff. It grows every year and has swallowed up whole portions of the forest around the dune.

On day three, we drove to Bordeaux and explored the city. It is a truly beautiful city and a lot of fun.. We walked down the Rue Ste. Catherine, a long shopping boulevard and got lunch at another falafel stand, really good and cheap too! We had a lot of fun just wandering around and stopping at a patisserie and trying canales for the first time and stopping at some of the artisan chocolatiers where we tried samples and bought a little for dessert. All in all a nice time.

One thing we did not do in this area was check out the wineries. It's the busy season for the wineries, so most of them have closed their doors to visitors for tastings while they're harvesting. It did not stop us from trying the local wines, it just changed our source (store vs. vineyard).