One section of the beach in Biarritz. Altogether there is over a mile of beach spread out across the coast.
Four days on the beach. That’s what we wanted in Biarritz and it’s pretty much what we got, except for the actual beach part, sort of.
Biarritz, down in the very southwest corner of France, is described as a luxury beach resort known for its casinos, surfers, and the Hôtel du Palais. Now, we don’t surf and we have no use for casinos so we figured we should check out the Hôtel. Emperor Napoléon III bought land for a summer residence in Biarritz near Spain so his Spanish wife Eugénie wouldn’t get too homesick and then had this great palace built. Their stays brought the seaside location to attention of other fancy people and it quickly became the place to be for royals and those around them.
An evening view across our pool and out to the main beach
After Napoleon was overthrown in 1870, though, the property was sold and converted into a luxury hotel. So that’s where we stayed. And for a grand old hotel it’s still in pretty good shape. Beautiful, in fact. You see pictures of people like the Duke & Duchess of Windsor (Edward & Wallis, of course) staying there in the 1950s. All pretty elegant.
The only thing I thought was unusual, though, is that while the hotel is directly on the beach, it doesn’t have a beach itself. And the public beach there, while beautiful, doesn’t have the kind of loungers and umbrellas that Mark in particular needs to be comfortable. Add to that the fact that the seas are really pretty heavy there – it is, after all, known for its surfing – you couldn’t spend much time in the actual water. So we made do with great lounge chairs at the hotel pool overlooking the beach. It was a pretty acceptable compromise.
Mostly we had our meals in town but lunch at the hotel was pretty fabulous too
Otherwise, with one exception, there’s not a lot to say about Biarritz. It’s a beach town with at least one pretty fabulous hotel. We ate, we lounged, we read, we swam a little, we ate some more. But there’s one strange thing about France on this trip that we haven’t written about yet.
Mark & I first came to France together a little over 30 years ago and have been back many times since. My memory might be a little off but it seems as though way back then – and if not that first trip, not long after – restaurants in France had this great system for paying the bill. When it was time to pay the bill the waiter would come to your table with a handheld device and run your card right there. None of this nonsense of taking your card back to some station, returning it, waiting for you to sign it, and all that. For decades, literally decades, French restaurants were so much more efficient than American restaurants in that regard.
Suddenly, that’s no longer the case. In nearly every restaurant we’ve been to on this trip when it’s time to pay the bill, you the diner go into the restaurant (we’re eating outdoors nearly every meal), go to the front station, try to explain which table you’re at, and pay the bill there. It’s the strangest thing; we can’t figure out how or why they went from a system that was so efficient to … this.
Weird. A word that occasionally applies to more than just the Republican presidential ticket.
The view from our room. The hotel is what they call a Palace hotel – one step up from five stars. So it should be pretty great. And while our room was beautiful with this great view, it was really small and the bathroom almost shockingly small. Somehow, we survived.
A tourist town like Biarritz has a lot of low-quality tourist restaurants. With enough research, though, Mark still found some pretty great places for us to eat.
The hotel, the grounds, and the view out to the ocean
Mark having lunch
Dinner one night was at this somewhat strange local place. The food was pretty good but you had the sense that it was really all about locals, with annoying dogs, who knew the owner and would run in and out with no shirt and no shoes. Somehow it worked, especially when the owner comped our pre-dinner drinks!
The beach during a misty morning
Mark outside the hotel as we returned for dinner
And finally, there was this second-strangest restaurant bathroom with crazy lighting. Those colored lights are all moving around as though there were some disco ball creating them. Very strange. This is the second consecutive blog I’ve written that ends with a picture of a toilet. I’m hoping it’s the last!