2011 Summer holiday - week 2 - Arcachon - Parentis en Born – San Sebastian – Bordeaux

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After a wonderful first week of our holidays we moved on to our second base in Parentis en Born, which is on the West Coast of France not far from Bordeaux.

It was a fair drive to get from our first base to here, in fact I drove over 2400 KM’s on this holiday and loved every minute of it, I’ve driven all over Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Spain and France and always enjoy it. I very rarely drive at home, we have one car that I pay for, put petrol in, clean and maintain but Fiona drives it… to be fair she needs it for the kids and other than a wee drive at the weekends sometimes I’m very rarely behind the wheel so look forward to getting out and about on our holidays, it gives you that bit of freedom – and this is something that came in handy in this second week.

Midway though our second week the weather took a turn for the worse, it actually got a bit cold and rained one day with the same forecasted for the next day. We were a bit more remote in this second week and although the camp site was great with loads of water sports and play parks around there wasn’t much to visit or anything to do indoors, so rather than sit about inside or drive for the sake of it we took a trip into Spain for a couple of days to beat the weather.

We had no intention of going into Spain when we booked this holiday but we had a great couple of days driving through the French Basque Country and into Spain and stayed two nights in San Sebastian which gave us our hottest weather of the fortnight and bagged Lois’s her fourth country in her first two years, not too shabby.

I’ve always loved Spain and speak Spanish to a decent level so it was great to get out and about in a part of the country I had never visited before, Fiona wasn’t feeling great the first day so had a wee rest in our hotel whilst Lois and I went exploring. San Sebastian is a lovely city, it’s quite busy but relatively small and very walk able – even with a buggy, it has more churches that anywhere I’ve ever been and outside each church were these fantastic play parks! It took us hours to get anywhere as Lois had to try out each and every one, the poor thing was shattered but the end of the day as it was quite hot and very muggy but we had a lovely day and ended it with an ice cream on the beach to cool down.

Fiona was out and about with us on the second day and we had another nice walk around the town and along the beach, it seems to be a Mecca for European surfer student types, tidy. It was an early night for Lois and Fiona sent me out for food whilst she slept, her only craving was albondigas, AKA meatballs! Along with crisps, ice cream, fizzy juice sweeties etc… so I trouped out to the supermarket and looked for a take away, I couldn’t find one and was back at the hotel with our shopping, when I noticed a wee pub opening up opposite our hotel. I dumped the bags in the hotel stairwell and went across to investigate. After a couple of swift half’s I noticed they were selling albondigas as tapas, excellent I thought – I’ll get a few more pints in then ask for some to take away – and I did, and after the women contained her laughter at the thought of me asking for albondigas para llevar we done the deal and I was back into the hotel with piping hot meatballs in a rich tomato sauce, a bag of salad and stick of bread.

Now, I’ve been referring to our digs as a hotel – it was actually a pension, which is basically a B&B, without the second B, it’s a room with an ensuite, it was really nice – quite plush in fact but as Lois was sleeping soundly we thought it would be safer to sit in the ensuite and eat our dinner, so here’s Fiona – 6 months pregnant - sitting on the toilet shovelling food into her mouth whilst I run my now warm take-away beers under the cold tap whilst sitting on the floor making a salad, listening to music on my phone, what a laugh – I just wish we had some photo’s.

It really was a great fortnight, in the second week we went to a Zoo and to a dinosaur theme park, both were excellent albeit boiling days out, peppered with three lazy afternoons at the beach in Arcachon. The Zoo was great, Lois loved the tree-top walk through the lion enclosure and Fiona loved the park bench in the shade for lunch. The dinosaur park was crazy, it was like a Blackpool type theme park with this Dinoland bolted on the side. You walked through the 20 or so different stations while the automated narrator spoke French at you as we read the translation you daren’t move to the next stage until the green light went on, woe betide the boy who walked through the red light to the next station….

It was really quite frightening, I’m surprised Lois went through the whole thing, I’m not 100% sure what it was about – I think it was about Jesus making dinosaurs or something but then it got really cold so the dinosaurs became mammoths but then the caveman came and ate the mammoth but then the HMRC came around and taxed the cavemen and changed the rules on CBT’s which in turn killed off the Huns and at the end Samantha Mumba (the real one, not a tape) came out and sang a song, very bizarre.

Arcachon was a lovely wee town on the sea, it looked quite expensive in relation to the houses and cars on the scene, we ate lunch in a couple of (albeit lovely) restaurants off the main drag and it was really quite pricey, but total quality, then down to the beach for a run around in order to burn off some calories. Lois loved it, the beach was warm, the sea was cool and there were very few people around, a total chill out place with ice cream on tap, my kind of place, as was the whole region actually.

There was some lovely wee towns in the French Basque region going into Spain and it's a place we will return to and investivate further in the future, however there are may more unconquered lands I must, well conquer, before then.

Mudpie out!

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