We have been very, very, awfully busy. Just this last weekend we visited the French section of the Basque Country. It is French enough, and Paris exercises sovereignty over it,  but apparently the people also consider themselves to be Basque which comes complete with its own language. Not an unusual situation in the world when you think about it. 

The cities we visited along the way included St. Jean-de-Luz and Bayonne (not the one in NJ). From there we went to the famous and very affluent shore town of Archachon, which has a certain similarity to Spring Lake, NJ. Also on the list were Espellet and Biarritz.  

St Jean-de-Luz, a sort of fishing village where we first stopped is fairly small and known for its oysters. (We didn’t try them.) After the stop in St Jean-de-Luz we headed to the reasonably large city of Bayonne where we stayed for 2 days. From our base of operations in Bayonne we made our way to Archachon to do a walking tour of the city. 

Later we went to the town of Espellet where we had lunch and went on a walking tour with our guide Luciano. 

The last town we went to this go-around was Biarritz. It is super posh, as they say, and is filled with all the shops you would expect…Hermes, Cartier and the rest of the usual suspects. Biarritz from which the expression “putting on the Ritz” originated, also had two magnificent cathedrals which we saw. One dominated the main square, the other was on top of a hill. Last, but not least, Biarritz is the site of an historic lighthouse looking out over the Atlantic. All in all a very nice and very active weekend. 

And that doesn’t count French class and the homework. Or the wine tastings. More about those later.

Au revoir

Joe