day 8 :

sunday, 18 september

Breakfast was at our gîte in Lay-Lamidou today, where we chatted with a very friendly British couple. It was nice to speak full, grammatically-correct sentences in a language we understood for once! We hadn't been keeping up on any news during this trip, so one interesting bit of information this couple mentioned was that Delta and Northwest had filed for bankruptcy a few days earlier; that was interesting, given that those were the airlines we were booked on to get back home! As it turned out, there was no impact to our travel, but it certainly was an ironic bit of news to hear at the time.

We spent part of the day in Bayonne, a beautiful city from the 11th century, located in the French Basque region and built on a river. We had a wonderful lunch at Auberge du Cheval Blanc, where we had a great bottle of Irouleguy wine - a Domaine Brana 2003. We've tried a few Irouleguy wines previously including one the night before, but none of them were memorable or particularly good. This one, on the other hand, was fruit-forward, with a nice blackberry nose, and matched our tastes much better.

Next stop was Biarritz. We found that Biarritz is not our kind of town - it's where the rich-and-famous of Europe go to relax in the ultra-expensive hotels and spas, and to stroll along the seawall promenade. We took a stroll there as well, and found people from all walks of life - surfer dudes, young parents, elderly couples with their dogs, and of course the well-heeled elite.

We almost ran out of gas again, even after vowing to not let the car go empty. The problem this time was that gas stations aren't open on Sundays, and of course we're not really concerned about what day of the week it is since we're on vacation. Fortunately, once we got onto an expressway and found a rest area, there was gas station with a real live person working there, so we lucked out.

On our way back to Lay-Lamidou, we stopped for pictures of the beautiful Béarn countryside. Many of the houses we saw were hundreds of years old, nicely maintained, and well-integrated with the surrounding landscape and farming fields. To us, this region of France felt as though we had discovered The Shire: lush green rolling hills dotted with cows and horses; swashes of trees in the valleys, and in between, fields of grasses and corn; the stone houses and wooden timbers that had a timeless look to them; the constant chirping of birds; the sun casting a warm glow on everything. It's the kind of place that just makes you smile when you're there.

While driving through the small town of Audaux, we saw a beautiful arched gate on a side road leading into an estate. The setting sun was casting warm light on it, so we decided to stop to take a picture. As we were walking up, an elderly woman and young girl got out of their nearby parked car and the woman started talking to us in French very quickly. Having no idea what she was saying, we said that we were visiting, that we only spoke a little French, and that we'd like to take a picture of the gate. She replied enthusiastically, telling us we should go walk around the grounds beyond the gate. We thanked her and walked over to the gate to take our photo, and looked inside rather dubiously. We hesitated and were starting to turn back when the woman saw us and shouted "Entrez! Entrez!" from afar while waving her hands to tell us to go inside. Apparently, we had no choice, so we went in. Someone up the driveway was sitting and staring at us, not moving, but not exactly making us feel welcomed. So, we took a few more pictures and left, and fortunately the woman and girl had driven away by this point, allowing us to escape. But, we realized that it was really rather nice to have this woman take an interest in making sure that visitors like us enjoyed our time in the area. If only we actually recognized what she was saying, we would have understood that this was the Chateaux d'Audaux, which is open to the public, but was closed at the time that we happened to stop. The British couple explained this to us the next morning at breakfast, since they had visited it only the day before.