Leaving Barçelona was an adventure itself. France was having one of its apparently frequent strikes. We got to experience 2 kinds of strikes in one week!
First was a big deal; Sarkozy was dead set on raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. Goodness gracious! So the public sector of France decided to do strikes. For us, that meant that we were leaving Barçelona but we couldn't go to Geneva, because France was in the way. We found this out at the train station. (Side note: not having internet phones is a huge hassle! Whenever anything changes, we never know about it, and it's always hard to find wifi [they say wee-fee :-]!)
We decided to take a train day anyway, and hopped a train to Irún (Basque country, right on the border with France). The hope was that we might get a chance to pop over the border, but it ended up that we just stayed in a hotel that night. The next day we made it up to Anglet for a night at the youth hostel there. On the way, and for one of the first times, we struck up conversation with a young student from Barçelona named Alexandra. She was taking a weekend trip to Bayonne (near Anglet), to relax from the stress of being a college student. We explained how crazy America was, she explained how crazy Spain was, and we marveled at how crazy France was. We ended up meeting a French Foreign Legion soldier from Mongolia on the way, who gave us some beer. That was nice of him. I gave him some beignets.
We all parted ways in Bayonne and we took a long walk to our hostel.
It's a sufing hostel. What'cha expect?
Campers, tents, and surfers. Makes me wish I was 19 and a surfer.
Very reasonably priced, and it was about a 5 minute walk from the Atlantic ocean.
Anglet/Bayonne/Biarritz local bus service isn't creepy at all.
We went down, took a couple of pics in the fading daylight, and then grabbed some dinner at a Tex Mex place right on the beach called “Chili's.”
Chris is a Chili's veteran bartender, and said that it looked like a knock-off, but everything we ate had that little je-ne-sait-kwa, the sauces were creamier, the breads were richer. All I all, it was a very tasty meal.
Chris finds that guacamole is spelled the same in French and English!
This was called the Sweet Cappuccino, but it was just some brownie-ish stuff and a cap, so I did the only sensible thing; I put the brownie in the cap. Then I ate it!
Margs and Guac and Chips and Salsa! It's a Chili's!
Of course, since it was a hostel, the other people in our room were obligated to come back loud and drunk. But after they left to compose themselves, came back, wrestled and tickled each other a bit more, they settled down, and we all managed to get some good sleep. We checked out the next morning (we forgot to tell the people we needed to leave early, so there was a bit of a panic regarding Chris's passport still being stuck in the office, but things worked out) and we caught the train to Paris.
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