My second journey into continental Europe since the start of my blog brings be to Biarritz in sunny south France! Well, I say sunny, we’ll come onto that…

Ryanair were doing one of their many seat sales, and I for one always wanted to travel to Bilbao in Spain. Going direct however, certainly not cheap. So why not incorporate somewhere else into this one? That’s where Biarritz came in as an alternative airport. Only a 2-hour bus ride away, I booked the flight to France and half of that to Spain, and prepped everything for a three-day journey away.

Getting to Stansted Airport and boarding the plane, Blue Handling (Ryanair’s ground handling operator run by OmniServ to replace SwissPort who completely messed up last summer!) were trailling a new method of boarding and ground handling on this day. It however didn’t quite go to plan, with two extra bags and a passenger boarding the wrong flight! How someone can get onto the wrong plane I’ll never know, but when a ground handler boarded and counted us up over and over again, you knew something was up. Eventually after half an hour of checking boarding passes and re-loading all bags, were were able to secure the plane and depart.

The flight went without a hitch, although landing through a storm meant for a bumpy landing. We de-boarded after a very apologetic message over comms for the delay, and I got off the plane. Biarritz Pays Basque Airport is not a very large hub and only serves a few airlines, so going through security and making it to the exit was again a matter of minutes. I headed outside, asked a taxi driver for the cost of going to the city centre and we left.

Biarritz is a VERY beautiful city! Certainly a lot to look at, especially on the coast. My only knowledge of the city beforehand was of Le Rocher de la Vierge, a statue of Virgin Mary on a stack a short walk off the coast over a bridge. With the storm kicking off though, this bridge was closed and therefore we had no access. A shame, but we always have Sunday…

The coastal area near the bridge however still had some places to hang around, for example the arch slightly north of the bridge, had a little viewing platform you could climb up and see out to both the sea and La Grande Plage. It was here I spent a lot of my time, especially as the weather got clearer and what was originally a fairly cold and damp day, slowly became more plesant.

The main city centre and the local markets were also full of life and colour. Plenty on sale, crowds breaking in, it was easy to get soaked in with the people. There was also some music too with a local band playing their songs in different areas of the city.

Wandering the area also led me down a number of residential streets as well as a rather nice park on slightly raised ground. Being a very quiet area, this was the perfect place to just sit down and rest for a couple of minutes. Here I laid down, closed my eyes and let everything go. Having been awake since 4am, this was certainly needed! 😅

Next it was time to head south. I spent a lot of time in the central market area and the coast, so where else was there to go? Walking south, I came to a large high wall maybe 100 meters in the air, with a staircase scaling this to the top. Of course I decided to climb the stairs, and this was by no means an easy task! Walking up was almost vertical. By this point the sun was also getting a lot warmer and therefore increasing the workload. Completely worth it though, the views of the surf resort and the high waves breaking in was fantastic.

As the weather hit its peak, I decided to now head to the beach. La Grande Plage is one of France’s most famed beaches with its natural yellow sands and waves, not strong enough to knock you over, but enough to easily soak you through! It has been a number of years since I last kicked off my shoes and walked barefoot on a beach, but it was certainly worth it. Walking down the kilometer of beach, it was both peaceful yet full of life. The waves also crawled their way up a number of times, but not completely covering the sandy area making for plenty of room to sunbathe. Sadly though, the weather did not last.

As my time in Biarritz came towards its end and I needed to think about heading to the bus stop for my connection to Spain, I looked for somewhere to have a quick snack. There was a small outlet, popular by the queues, selling churros and other local patries. I decided to go for the churros seeing these were the most popular, and you could just taste why! All freshly made in front of you, these were delicious and warmed you well on a cold day.

After enjoying the churros, I loaded up Google Maps and made the 20 minute walk to the bus stop. It had arrived five minutes late, but other than that the boarding was swift and I was on my way to Basque Country!

Michael
Biarritz, France