Bordeaux and Palmiers

I’ve been pretty bad about updating this blog… will you forgive me if I say I’ve had a lot on my plate? I thought I was going to be traveling to an entirely new place–an entirely new continent for me–with new stories that I would have shared with you on this blog and new pictures, and then those plans fell through and I’ve been working on coming up with new plans to fit in where the old ones should have gone.

Regardless of whether that trip happens, I do have another trip to write about–one that we took over one of the three long weekends that the French are graced with in the month of May. Alex and I decided to head all the way to the Basque region of France, right next to Spain, to do some exploring.

When we booked the trip, we were looking forward to the warm weather that we assumed one of the last weekends of May would bring. I knew that I wanted to try surfing for the first time, and we booked a hotel right on the beach (the highly recommended Hotel Valencia–well-priced and with a bar beneath that looks out on the water). Unfortunately, we only had one great weather day–a day we devoted to at least trying to learn how to surf.

There was a silver lining, which was our decision to take the boat across the water ten minutes to Spain and the Spanish town of Fuenterrabia. It rained the entire time we were there, so we spent most of our time holed up in different Basque bars–not a complaint, considering that the Spanish Basque region is one of the best in the whole country for tapas, or, as they’re called in the Basque language, pinxtos. 

Hendaye and Fuenterrabia are small towns–there isn’t a lot of tourism to be done, and in the summertime, Hendaye becomes a tourist destination mainly because of the family-friendly beaches on the Atlantic, which are also a great place for surfers to come. Although the weather wasn’t ideal (an understatement… on our walk back to the train station, we huddled under a bus shelter to wait out a hail storm!) I really enjoyed our stay in Hendaye and our visit to Fuenterrabia… I highly recommend visiting, especially in the high season.

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