Saturday, June 1
It felt super good to sleep in today, though I'm starting to wonder what I'm doing that keeps putting my left pinky to sleep. It's been a couple times now where I wake up with that digit being numb. But I savored the morning and didn't make it out of bed till after 10:30.
My phone revealed that last night's crew had only stayed out an extra hour before calling it a night. Surprisingly, some of them had beaten me to waking up and were en route to the Saturday market in Bidart. Instead of getting the car or bus to reach Bidart before the market closed up, I opted to stay in Biarritz today.
I put on my swimsuit, packed my tote bag, and headed towards les Halles. Surprisingly, the Halle's weren't as packed as I've previously seen them; there were still plenty of people but it wasn't packed to the gills. I grabbed some baked goods, olives, cured pork, and cheese as part of my plan to picnic on the beach. And picnic on the beach I did, though several of my groceries didn't get eaten and will be saved for later consumption.
Working my way to the beach! The walk from Rue Verdun to la Petite Plage passes by tons of stores and restaurants and they were all bustling with activity today.
Ah, yeah. It's good to take a day to just enjoy living in a beach town.
Blue cheese made from sheep's milk. It was surprisingly mild for a blue cheese, maybe even sweet. The olives were also really good; I'd taken a small tub of olives in the Andalusian style, which involved marinating with citrus 😋
With my swimsuit already on, I applied a bit of sunscreen and just relaxed on the little beach for the afternoon. I made progress on DuoLingo and the book I've been super slowly working my way through (James Clavell's Shogun) while waiting to warm up enough to merit a dip in the water. I did eventually take that dip and swam out towards the tip of le rocher de la Vierge before working back in to shore, over the course of the 20 minutes in the water, I'd say the temp got more comfortable but never quite comfy to simply float. The swim back also featured kids on kayaks weaving around.
My sunblock applications and flipping almost protected me from sunburn; I ended up with a light burn on my upper back and along the lines of my swim suit. But totally worth it.
There were a few more topless ladies at the beach. It was kinda funny to see how one woman took particular care to keep her top from abruptly falling off as I wasn't sure if she was just undoing the strap to lay prone; but once it came off she just lay there supine and started applying sun block. I guess its a muscle mammary thing. Also, that sounds way creepier written down than I had intended 😅
Here's the new place; my building shares a narrow T-shaped alley with two other buildings. I'm on the 2nd floor, which involves working my way up a dark spiral staircase. I'm sure there's a light switch for the stairwell but I'm too afraid of ringing somebody's doorbell instead of hitting the light switch to really find out...
The view from the living room window.
After getting my fill of sunlight, I returned to the apartment to shower off before returning towards Les Halles for the afternoon/evening activity of visiting the Biarritz history museum. Housed in an old church, this museum featured 6 main sections, each section featured a big explainer plaque, a few laminated pamphlets, and a display case surrounding one of the church columns.
The organization of subjects was a bit strange and seemed to condense time periods strangely. It kinda boiled down to: the city before Eugenie de Montijo, imperial life, other notable nobles, the world wars, sports!, and water sports! From the ancient history, I thought it interesting they mentioned how donkey rides guided by young girls was a profession for while to compensate for the sandy, uneven ground. I don't feel I know much more about Napoleon III nor Eugenie other than they summered in Biarritz for many years but I saw items and photos from their stays. With the Imperial court in Biarritz, nobles and celebrities came too; then eventually it became a vacation spot for the English too (one card said that sometimes there were almost as many English visiting as inhabitants). The wars saw heavy losses for Biarritz, the conversion of buildings into hospitals, and a seat of Basque resistance against Vichy France.
The little beach used to be a fishing/whaling harbor until it behooved the visiting elites to use it as a resort beach and fishermen became guides and lifeguards.
When I'd arrived at the museum, there was a bunch of dressed up people leaving the "cloister". It was locked up after but looks fancy
From the little beach to the big (or imperial) beach. I've no regrets of taking a nice sunny day to enjoy the beach here.
Dinner was at a place called La Table Basque; overall, not too shabby! I guess it means I've done a decent job sampling Basque menus that only a few items looked unfamiliar to me on la carte. Here's codfish in a cream and parsley sauce.
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