The Chateau de Pau, birthplace of King Henri IV

From Biarritz we left the Atlantic coast and headed east, making a three-night stop in Pau, the largest town in the Pyrenees. You’ve probably never heard of Pau, and I hadn’t either before planning this trip. But it was a logical stop to make as we head toward the center of France and eventually across the country to the French Alps.

Pau is a pretty town on a hill above the River Pau, at the edge of the Pyrenees. At the turn of the 20th century it was a favorite wintering spot for British and American expats, and the town today retains some of the grandeur of that time. The Boulevard des Pyrénées wraps around one edge of town, supposedly offering its strollers views of the mountains. But I didn’t see anything that looked like mountains. More like small hills at the very outer edge of what might become a mountain range.

We were originally scheduled to pick up a car in Biarritz, so that we could more easily explore the mountains here. In fact we were going to keep that car for the rest of this trip. But we canceled the car in favor of more train travel. That means we didn’t really see anything resembling a mountain at all, but it was perfectly nice to hang out in this pleasant town, get laundry and some other errands done, and enjoy some surprisingly good food.

Pau was once the capital of the Kingdom of Navarre, and it is the birthplace of king Henri III of Navarre, who would eventually become King Henri IV of France, the founder of the Bourbon dynasty. Henri would spend a lifetime navigating the wars between Catholics and Protestants. He survived numerous assassination attempts, until one Catholic zealot stabbed him to death in Paris in 1610. Henri has a strong presence here in Pau, including the castle where he was born, where you can also see the turtle shell that supposedly served as his crib.

This was a lovely stop, if not the mountain adventure we might have expected. But no worries, since we’re sure to see some REAL mountains in a couple weeks. But our next stop is Toulouse, where we look forward to meeting up some great friends from New York.

We loved the outdoor dining in this pleasant town with surprisingly good food

Walking along the River Pau

Did we mention the exceptional food we kept finding here?

Lots of this kind of thing

The elegant church of Saint Martin towers over the town

Inside Saint Martin

We couldn’t stop taking these food pics!

Ok, that’s the last restaurant pic

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!

Soaking up cafe culture on the leafy streets of beautiful Bordeaux, just steps from our hotel

Our hotel was an imposssibly elegant restored mansion

Bordeaux is kind of a stopover for us — to break up the trip down the west coast of France to Biarritz. But it’s a darn nice place to stop for a couple days. We’ve been here twice before, and it just might be one of our favorite cities in France.

What makes Bordeaux such a great place? It might be the super elegant neo-classical palaces that line the river Garonne. It might be the energy in the sprawling pedestrianized city center — one of the world’s largest. It might be the prevalence of great food, bustling cafes, and lively bars. And it certainly has to do with the wine culture that overlays everything in this city and the region.

Oddly, following our first visit to Bordeaux 10 years ago, we wrote that “We just didn’t get it” when it came to drinking Bordeaux wines. We loved the city and maybe even the presence of wine culture, but we just didn’t appreciate the wines themselves when we tried them. For many years, I’ve said that red Bordeaux wines taste like licking a Band-Aid.

But this time was different! Over the past decade we’ve both learned to appreciate the blends that make up Bordeaux wines a bit more, particularly the reds. And earlier in this trip we’ve begun dabbling a bit in some of the Bordeaux whites. And here in Bordeaux this time we learned a bit more about the geography, the grapes, and the wines by visiting the Cité du Vin, a huge museum about all things wine. All of this has enhanced our love for this beautiful city and its great wine tradition.

We had a lovely dinner just underneath the 11th century Cathedral of Saint André

A tour of the Cité du Vin wine museum helped enhance our appreciation for the local hooch

We’ve also come to appreciate the super plump and mildly briny Gillardeau oysters from the West coast of France

This amazing park was about a block from our hotel

Another world class dinner in Bordeaux

A grand fountain on the way home from dinner

We watched some of the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics with locals in an atmospheric pub

A gorgeous street scape in Bordeaux, including our Olympics pub on the right