A Weekend Trip to the Atlantic Coast

Well I have been a bad girl and haven’t written in a while!  It all started when I went away this weekend and didn’t start blogging.  Once it’s not fresh in my memory I get lazy and don’t feel like catching up!  But here it goes…

Friday morning I left early to go to Lacanau—a town on the west/Atlantic coast of France!  It’s a little weird to say that I went to the west coast but was still looking at the Atlantic ocean!  I went with 2 French girls which is the best part!!!!  I’m making friends…I’m not a loser after all!  Haha.  The one girl found me on facebook because she went to the high school I teach at and wants to practice her English.   Her name is Elisa…and then Elisa invited her friend Elodie with us (she is going to college to be a Spanish teacher)!  So Friday they both met at my school at 8:30 AM.  We stopped at about 10 to get groceries for the weekend and continued about an hour or so to a town called Blaye.

 (*Side note: on the way there I didn’t understand what they were saying quite often and wondered what I got myself into!  They spoke SO FAST and used words that I don’t know.  When I speak, I speak like a professor or old person because I know formal French…thus, informal French gets a bit tricky!  With this said, I often had no idea what we were doing or where we were going…I was the dumb kid in the back seat most of the time…I think they gave my French too much credit!! Keep reading to find out more about my French level/comprehension.

 Blaye is a citadel and kind of reminds me of Fort Niagara.  It was cool—but there wasn’t too much to see and it was kind of boring once we walked around.  It wasn’t very informational, but was cool nonetheless.  We then ate our picnic style lunch (sandwiches and clementines) and went back on the road.  We stopped at a few tourist viewpoints to take pictures and stopped at one winery or shall I say chateaux OR in English- CASTLE!  I learned that wineries in the Bordeaux region, AKA where I was, are all called Chateaux, so if you are looking to buy a Bordeaux wine they all say Chateaux because it means winery…learn something new every day!  Elisa and Elodie don’t like wine so we opted not to wine taste.   I didn’t want to be the only lush and ‘good’ Bordeaux wine is dry and red…and I prefer sweet wine, so I’d probably be offensive if I told them I only want to try the sweeter wines seeing as that is considered as bad wine and isn’t their specialty.  Next thing you know (2 hours later), we were back at Blaye…I eventually figured out that we were going to take a ferry across the Gironde river (see map above) to get to Lacanau.  (Well actually first I thought we were taking the ferry to visit the other side and then I realized that the car was coming with us)!  The river was an ugly brown color.  So it was 5PM by this point so apparently we were just wasting time driving along until the next ferry crossed…who knew??  Not me, that’s for sure. 

(Picture above right is taken from the outside of te citadel- that is the wall that protects the fort from intruders.  Pitcure above left is a picture of the complex layers of the citadel making it difficult for intruders to cross ).


After this we continued to Lacanau and found our aparthotel (hotel that is made of apartments).  We checked in after we waited in line for thirty minutes (welcome to France where everything is slower) and found our room.  We then dropped our stuff and went straight to the ocean.  The sun just set so it was dark but we could still see.  It was very pretty but my camera didn’t take very good pictures so we didn’t get the full effect into morning when we walked on the beach a little more.

(Picture above: it's hard to tell where the water ends and the sky begins, it was much prettier in person and the colors were a lot more vibrant).

Ok time out for now, I have to go teach at the middle school even though I’d prefer to finish my recap of the weekend’s events.  To Be Continued.

Now we are onto Saturday.  Saturday we woke up semi-early (8:30) and did another tour of the beach.  Now you can see the beach in all it's glory.

(Picture above: the waves were HUGE and people were surfing on the ocean! It was really cool. On Lacanau lake, there was a wind surfing competition that we saw in passing, it was realy cool to see a bunch of wind surfing boarder things on the lake all in a compact area).

(Picture below: At Cap Ferret, you can see bluer water than Lacanau and you can also see the dunes in the background!)

 Later on we went to Cap Ferret, another town on the coast about an hour and a half away.  It was really pretty there and the water was bluer than in Lacanau.  From what I understood, Lacanau is sort of an inlet or a bigger cove type thing so the water isn’t a blue as in other places.  From Cap Ferret I saw “Les Dunes de Pilat” across the river…basically a big sand dune.  We decided it’s better to go to Cap Ferret (see map above) and see the dunes across the river than to go to the dunes themselves because other than trekking up to the dunes there isn’t much else to see.  After walking the coast a little bit we started the trek back and stopped at a few viewpoints to take pictures.  When we got back (and I felt car sick—as always), we watched a movie (in French), made dinner and then watched another movie that I politely slept through.  I normally fall asleep during movies and then you put them in French and it’s ten times easier to fall asleep.  And especially after only listening and speaking French all day, my brain gets tired quickly! 

I just realized I forgot a CRUCIAL part!  On Friday night they made crepes!  Our dinner crepes were ham and cheese and then we had dessert crepes with Nutella!  YUM YUM.  I am curious to try and make crepes when I get home…it seems super easy.  3 eggs, 250 grams of flour (but they didn’t measure) and then add milk until it’s pretty thin! And then cook!  They probably made it look a lot easier than it was, it will probably be a disaster if I try but I am sure it will be worth it!

Now to Sunday…we slept in until about 10, went to the grocery store to buy bread, (grocery stores in France are only open Sunday mornings and then close for the afternoon…they really take Sunday is the day of rest to heart), said our final goodbyes to the ocean and beach and started our trek home.  We ended up stopping in a few cities to look at the beach and then stopped at Fort Médoc…basically a French Fort Niagara.  It was ok, was pretty cheap, and we picnicked there and it broke up our trip a little.  As we continued we went down a road in Bordeaux where all the famous chateaux are located!  They looked awesome from the outside and I am sure they were (BUT it was Sunday and working on a Sunday…what’s that?  Obviously they were closed) but we didn’t stop!  Maybe I’ll go back at some point, maybe not though!  Who knows?!  So we started out trek around noon and I got back to Bellac at 7PM.  The drive was only 4.5 hours but we stopped a lot.  Basically by the end I was sick of being in a car and just wanted to get back!  I am not a big fan of road trips in general, and French roads (AKA me being car sick) and speaking French for a whole weekend get difficult real quick. 

In summary, I am completely glad I went and got to see the Atlantic coast.  It was nice and it was a cheap weekend (70 euros including 2 nights in a hotel, 6 meals, and gas for the weekend) which is always awesome.  AND—by the end of the weekend I understood a lot more than I did on the way there.  It’s crazy how just one weekend with native speakers hlped my comprehension.  Also, by the end of the weekend I was speaking a lot more because I was more comfortable and confident!  Yay French—I actually felt like I am fulfilling my purpose of coming here…to improve my French!  SCORE!   

(Picture above: this is a picture of one of the MANY apartment/hotel buildings on the resort. Some people own their room, some are rented like hotel rooms, while others have time shares!  For 12.50 euro/night, I couldn't go wrong.  This was the last weekend that the complex was open meaning that tourist season is officially over.  I am sure Lacanau would be a bumping place in summer!  Definitely somewhere I would want to go if I ever return to France in summer.  Someday that will happen...)