BIARRITZ to ST JEAN de LUZ

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BIARRITZ to ST JEAN de LUZ (via Sans Sebastian) - 10th May 2007 (Thursday Biarritz 27º Sunshine: Sans Sebastian 17º and Overcast)

We wake and decide to move on. This is the beauty of our mode of travel - if we like a place we stay and if we don’t we move on. Its not that we don’t like Biarritz it just doesn’t hold much for us (and besides our Sunglasses aren’t big enough).

The car is on a meter and I go out to provide it with an endless stream of euros but it is Hors Service (Out of Order). This pleases me greatly until Deb points out that there is another machine just across the street.

Petit De’jeuner is taken at ‘The Passage’, a funky little café/shop across the street from the Bellevue. It is run by a couple of gay guys and this makes me reflect on the name of the café. Regardless, we have a nice breakfast of eggs and coffee and buy several ceramic cups & saucers to take home to Oz.

Seeing as we are in no hurry we go for a shop and Deb spots some ‘must have’ shoes that she acquires, after all tomorrow is her birthday.

Into the FFF and off to Sans Sebastian (or so we reckon). We drive through some nice places including St Jean de Luz but decide to push on into Spain and Sans Sebastian. We arrive at the start of lunch/siesta time and park the car. Since leaving Biarritz the weather has set in and readers should note that when we dressed this morning it was for 27º, not the 17º that we are now experiencing.

So walking through the breezy city canyons of Sans Sebastian in board shorts and tank tops is not to be recommended unless it is 30º and sunny. Freezing our t*ts off we seek out the Tourist Information Bureau, we locate it after a 5 kilometre pilgrimage and of course it is closed, why in the hell would it be open in the middle of the day - crazy Australians.

We sulk in Macca’s over a bag of fries (would you like some cardboard flavour with your fries sir?) until the TIB reopens and we charge in. There is a queue jumper present and seeing as these types are my mortal enemies I can seethe no longer. I take out my ‘tupac’ graffiti style spray can and emblazon his back with the tag “Q JUMPERZ SUCK OK!”. Well I didn’t really spray him with a can but I did give him my most stern look.

The Tourist Information Centre is not entirely the most helpful we have encountered and when this lack of help is added to the fact that we are cold, tired and without accommodation - we are getting antsy with San Sebastian.

We bite the bullet and traipse off to check some of the Hotels in the guidebook we have been given. The first nearly does our head in - it is the Amalur on San Martin.

We have trouble finding the entrance and follow some folk through a likely doorway. At the lift we meet a large chap put together in the style of an Australian Wharfie. We soon realise this is Miguel the lugubrious manager of Chez Amalur and he has been giving the ‘vin rouge’ a hammering since the sun went over the yardarm. He takes us up to the rooms in a lift the size of a shoe box - this enables us to get into close quarters with the boozy Concierge and by the time we reach etage trois (Level 3) my eyes are watering and I would blow 0.29 on a breath test even though I haven’t had a drop. Deb appears to have passed into unconsciousness in the corner.

The Hotel is more like a Hostel and we peer into open rooms where what appear to be homeless miscreants and mass murderers loll around in semi-darkness waiting to steal our luggage and “keel us with knives” in the middle of the night.

We nod our approval to Miguel as he shows us through, fearful that any signs of negativity might incur another blast of alcohol-laden breath in our general direction. We back into the lift smiling and nodding and promise we will come back if we are as desperate as hell and can’t find a rat infested hellhole to stay in. (I must be getting old).

We suss out a few more joints but they aren’t suitable or require a deposit the size of the GNP of Botswana to secure a room that is so small that you’d have to walk outside to change your mind.

So we (mainly me) get the shits and we flee San Sebastian and head back to St Jean de Luz. We find a lovely Hotel and decide that it is too hard to drive into really big Cities and just expect everything to fall into place (Accommodation, Parking etc). It is much easier to do this in smaller places like St Jean de Luz. The Hotel Madison is charming and we have a beaut room on Level 3 with a wrap around balcony affording district views (sounds like a real estate advert).

So we didn’t put many miles under the bonnet today but we did experience a great piece of coast road, a temperature differential of 10 degrees in 30 minutes and we are now chowing down in La Magestic Restaurant. I am murdering a dish of local Sausages with Tomatoes and Onion sauce and Deb has given very little hope of survival to a Champignon Omelette. The accompanying Chateau Haut Pougnan (Bordeaux Superior) 2004 melts away the sharp edges of the day.

Back to the Madison for a night of blissful slumber.

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Photos

Amalur Resident
One of the residents from the Amalur in San Sebastian.

Hotel Madison
District Views.........

View from the Magestic Restaurant
The red wine soothed the rough edges off the day.