just another weekend... riding a vespa in France :-)

After lounging around on Friday, catching up on sleep and relaxing, I went to Biarritz, France with Kaitlin Saturday morning. The city is roughly 40 miles from San Sebastian but takes 1 1/2 hours by bus. We've heard it's a good day trip, not much to do, but a good way to get out of S.S. St. Jean de Luz is another small city close to Biarritz that we considered visiting. We packed backpacks, in case we felt like staying overnight and got on the bus Saturday, deciding that morning to start in Biarritz. The road to Biarritz curved in and out of the mountains and along the coast. It was a beautiful drive. The bus stopped in a few small towns along the way, each on the water with little marina filled sail boats, so cute!

First and foremost, we visited the small Museum of Chocolate in Biarritz! The walls of the "museum" were covered with old chocolate advertisements, baking trays for the chocolate molds (bunnies, eggs, former Kings and Queens, all types of animals... you name it, there was a tray for it). There was old chocolate making machinery, stones the native South Americans used to produce chocolate and a lot of other small things. We watched a 15 minute film (in French) about how chocolate is made and got to drink pure cocoa hot chocolate. It was really really rich but of course I loved it :-) It took a grand 25 minutes (including the film) to walk through the museum haha. As we were leaving, we saw a little rental shop and joked about how awesome it would be to ride a vespa. Well, our joke turned in to "alright, let's do it"... the shop owner lived in Hawaii for 5 years and spoke English so he was really helpful and gave us a great deal! Kaitlin has driven similar types of scooters before so we decided to rent 1 bike and trade off driving (she was a lot better driver than me). Biarritz is probably the best city to rent a Vespa in because there is not a lot of traffic and the streets are small- mainly one lane and one way. Aside from the multiple round-a-bouts, it was easy to drive around. There are no flat or straight streets in Biarritz either. Most of the streets are on steep slopes and our Vespa sounded more like a law mower ever time we took off. It was hilarious! One of the main roads runs right along the water and on the cliffs above as well. It was in the mid 70's most of the day so we just cruised around these gorgeous open roads on a Vespa… feeling very European :-)

Biarritz is exactly what I would picture a French town to look like. There are big, beautiful chateaus with window shutters, tall hedges and small grass areas in between one another. The chateaus are private homes, small hotels, businesses, or restaurants… on streets along the water or set farther back in town. We were excited to see the areas set away from the beaches a little bit, thanks to our Vespa (oh yeah, we named the Vespa “Jane” after one of the pretty chateaus named Jane).

The beaches were just as beautiful! Large rocks stood out a little ways off shore, the water edges were jagged and people were walking everywhere. It was amazing. We had lunch at this little place on one of the cliffs then walked around the shops for a while. When we returned Jane, 6 hours later, we walked around a little more then took the bus back to San Sebastian. Biarritz was incredibly underrated… we spent the entire day there! St. Jean de Luz would have to wait for another weekend; we loved Biarritz too much to leave.

Sunday afternoon we walked up Mount Igueldo in San Sebastian (the hill enclosing La Concha Beach, opposite of the hill with the statue of Jesus). The road wound all around the mountain, having some incredible views of the city, the ocean and the opposite side where a few houses were scattered on the continuing mountains. Although the people in San Sebastian are rude and restaurants act like you are inconveniencing them by entering… seeing the city from the top of Mount Igueldo, away from all of the noises where it is almost silent, makes me appreciate living in a beautiful place like San Sebastian!