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| Bayonne |
Since Thursday was a jour ferié for Veterans Day and our classes were cancelled, Karina and I decided to take the opportunity to head over to Spain for 2 days! Unfortunately for us, we didn’t realized that on holidays the trams all run 30 minutes apart…so we almost missed first train leaving from Bordeaux! We made it just in time to jump on our Lunéa train (sleeper train – first one I’ve ever taken) and got the best sleep I’ve had in what seems like months ! We got to Bayonne, a little town in the Pays-Basque (but still technically in France) 3 hours later very well rested. It was much smaller than I expected! Looking at a map it seems pretty decently sized, but we saw basically all the sites in 2 hours, explored the whole city, and took our time scoping out restaurants for lunch. We eventually found this restaurant with regional, pays-basque cuisine, some amazing fresh seafood.
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| Karina and I exploring Bayonne |
Next we started making our way to San Sébastien (also in the Pays-Basque, but actually in Spain). We had to transfer trains right over the border between Spain and France in a dinky little train station called Irún, so our ‘customs check’ was some people screaming at us in Spanish to see our train tickets, then shoving our bags through a scanner to make sure we weren’t carrying any bombs or firearms of course – not that the guys sitting at the scanner were paying any attention. How about that for a nice first welcome to Spain experience? Since our last train was around 15 minutes late and we only had 16 minutes between trains, we ran onto our next train (thankfully the right one!) and were on our way to San Sebastién! Upon stepping into the station, we quickly realized – no one speaks any French OR English AT ALL! And we pathetically realized we know virtually zero Spanish whatsoever. We didn’t even have a guide book with little useful phrases for tourists in the back of it.
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| San Sebastién |
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| the beach! |
The city itself is really beautiful, mostly all the buildings are done in the same architectural style (though I couldn’t for the life of me say what century it was from or anything) in some kind of yellow-tinted stone. It’s also right on the beach, and has a beautiful coastline – which we took advantage of on Friday since it was really warm out – a nice change from all the rain we’ve been having in Bordeaux! In the morning we explored a bunch of the city’s sights, then had to find a little internet café so I could register for classes for spring semester at Midd. Such a nice change from the environment when we register back at school – getting up super early so everyone in your grade can register at exactly 7am on the dot, have the system crash a few times, and not get into the classes you want so you’re frantically emailing professors asking to be put on the waitlist. Not bad that I got to do it for just a couple minutes in the middle of a beautiful day in the north of Spain. Then after I finished relatively quickly we headed to the beach, where we stayed until the end of our short visit and had to catch the train back to Bordeaux. It was a nice little preview, but I really want to go back and visit for longer some day!
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| City Hall |
Saturday night I went to my first soccer match here – Girondins (Bordeaux’s team) vs. Nancy-Lorraine. Not exactly as exciting as the world cup games, but fun all the same. A bunch of the middlebury kids went together, and we were in the section right next to what would be the ‘superfans’ or the student section at a university game – they were super loud and kept the cheers going the entire match without even a minute’s break! In the end we won 2-1, after being awarded a controversial goal in the last few minutes of the match!
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