Woke up in Paris ready to get over to Hertz to pick up the car we had rented. Walked across town for the last time and got our paperwork settled in. “We see that you requested an automatic car. Sorry but we don’t have any. Can you drive stick?” I look at Evan a little worried. I haven’t driven a stick-shift since the Poseidon box truck in like 2014. (By chance, one of the last times I drove it was with Evan on pch and a car swerved in front of me and we almost got into a gnarly crash where the truck skidded and everything.) Needless to say, I’m extremely rusty and the idea of getting out of Paris, through traffic, without being able to really drive well makes me uneasy. “You got this,” Evan says. Well fuck, if I’m ever going to relearn its got to be now, under pressure, because we are excited to go to Biarritz and get coastal. “We’ll take the car!”
Get in and realize I can't even get the car in reverse to get out of the parking spot. I’ve been putting the car in first and just lurching forward and after a few of those I’ve nearly hit the van parked in front of me. Oh boy this could be rough. Find the nice guy behind the desk, “Hey can you show me how to reverse?” HAHA. He teaches me about the secret reverse button and we make it out of Hertz. Now we drive back to the airbnb nice and easy so that we load up our stuff and get boards on the roof. It’s a cool moment to see the boards loaded up on the back of the little European hatchback with the beautiful backdrop of Parisian apartment rows.
But now it’s time for the real job of weaving through Paris to get to the freeway going south to Bordeaux. There are so many places where I have to merge and stop from one roundabout to a fast paced avenue where I keep stalling and not shifting this car properly. Tons of start and stop and people honking behind me because it either takes me a couple tries to get the thing going or I’m driving real slow. I pretty much nail shifting up in gear as we accelerate but getting the car to move forward from a standstill is where I keep messing up. Evan tells me to keep calm and "release the clutch slowly here and give it just a little more gas there," like he’s an expert in stick. We do make it out of Paris and I’m improving on the gear shifts for sure but I’m so focused on operating the car that I don’t really have the chance to watch the outskirts of Paris go by and turn into country. The driving gets easy because it's a straight freeway in 5th gear for hours.
Our plan had been to stop in Bordeaux for lunch but now on the road we were hustling to Biarritz. Luckily Evan had picked up some roast pig and chicken legs at the farmers market across the street from Hertz. Plus, we had the leftover cheese and ham from yesterday and the bonus macaroons we didn’t eat. We’d be covered for the 8 hour drive. Once in Biarritz back in start and stop roundabout city. Several stalled starts. I hoped I had gotten better over the course of the drive but when you're flying down the freeway not many chances to practice your starts. Made it to our sweet little airbnb in Anglet right on the water and it’s dumping rain.
9/25-
Get our first surf session of the trip right in front of our Anglet apartment. The weather forecast for our week shows 7 straight days of rain with a big storm on Tuesday/Wednesday, the swell forecast shows waves, so we know we are going to have to pick our surfs well. Today, It’s super rainy but also clears up with patchy clouds. At one point it’s lightly hailing when we’re paddling out. The sea is stormy and the surf isn’t that good but we had to get in. The waves aren’t great quality but there is plenty of size and we can get some rides. Feels great to move the body again and get aquatic after my hiatus in Paris.
The scene in Anglet is a series of beach breaks divided by jetties north of the big lighthouse at the end of Biarritz. There’s a boardwalk with shops and restaurants that go past the 3 or 4 jetties. Tons of people surfing in that whole zone, lots of beginners when it’s sunny and small but not too many right now because the waves are big and stormy. Our apartment is on the third floor and loft style with a slanted ceiling. We have views of the waves out in front and the lighthouse in the distance.
We returned the car at the Hertz at the Biarritz airport to the beautiful girl that worked there. Walked back from the airport slowly, chatting, seeing actual Biarritz in the daytime and taking the long way to our place in Anglet. On the way home we stopped and grabbed groceries for a big stew (dawn of stew boys) among other basics. At once we begin chopping onions, garlic, potatoes for our stew so that we can get it going and have a fresh hot meal waiting for us when we get out of the water.
We suit up upstairs and on the way down I smack the tail of my shortboard on an edge. I immediately knew I dinged it by the cracking sound it made. Fuck, I cant believe I already dinged my board and just before our second surf, suited up, in our first day in Anglet! Luckily it had only cracked off a previous repair I had made in Mexico with suncure. Out front I’m debating whether to paddle out anyways with a hole in my tail and just patch it tomorrow. In rides Leo on his motorcycle and pulls into the driveway. He’s our 19 year old downstairs neighbor stoked to surf when he sees us. “Yo, I’m coming. Give me 10 minutes and I can surf with you guys. Let’s go!” He brings me down some suncure and I get it locked in my tail as he and Evan paddle out. How lucky am I that our homie neighbor pulls up and gives me suncure within minutes of cracking my board?
The surf definitely picked up from this morning and we actually get some pretty good rides with Leo. We invite him up to have stew with us afterwards. He brings beers. The three of us spend several hours eating and chatting and drinking beers. He works at the Toyota dealership while also going to school for something business related in Bayonne. Today was real chill. 2 surfs, nice long walk through town, and homemade stew with a new friend.
9/26-
Did a little reading and writing. Trying to get all the journaling onto the blog but finding the formatting of all the pictures really annoying. Web design is not my strong suit so it's real time consuming. God knows I took a lot of photos in Paris. The app isn't letting me see the videos I uploaded so I posted them to instagram.
We meet for dinner for dinner at Jack & Cockerel restaurant in Biarritz. Bundle up and walk through the wind and rain for 30 min to get there. The food’s pretty good but the music is loud and night-clubby. It’s pretty empty there except for a staff’s birthday party that’s next door to us (in the restaurant) and absolutely pumping. It’s a 19 year old’s bday, so theyre getting rowdy and taking smoke breaks with club bangers going while we enjoy a nice bass. Not pissed about it because it’s all hilarious. Our server, Hugo, is a short, skinny dude getting all scrappy with his coworkers and encouraging us to get festive with his friends. He brings us shots of rum. “Here my friends, take this!” “Why is it pink?” “It’s strawberry flavored!” O fuck well I guess we’re taking this now, Hugo gave it to us, no excuses.
Bundle up and head home through the wind to our sweet little apartment in Anglet. Biarritz feels like downtown Santa Monica mixed with Santa Barbara. Everything is very manicured and clean. Window shopping everywhere. It feels very bougie and geared for the tourist rush that it gets every summer. Luckily it’s the off-season right now so not too crowded but still very happy to have a spot tucked away from all that down in Anglet.
9/27-
Dave & Kinzi pick us up in their rental car and we take a nice day trip to Bayonne. It’s like 30 ish minutes away. Everything is so close around here. Bayonne is the biggest city in the French Basque region and its historic center is far more beautiful than Biarritz’ with its 14th century cathedral.
Cruised around its narrow streets looking around at what feels like a medieval town. Many of the buildings have plaques that read what businesses have been there and what year they went into business and who took their place in what year. For example the pharmacy has been in the same spot since the late 1800s, it’s not the same one but in 1920 it was “pharmacy x” in 1940 “pharmacy y” and so on until today’s pharmacy. Kinda cool. The others are mainly “cobbler x” now it’s a “cafe y.” Still cool to mark the timeline of these old buildings, makes you feel life the narrow street you're wandering through is a museum.
Had a cappuccino and took another lap around town admiring all the basque buildings and the nice bridges connecting the town across the picturesque river. We settled for a delicious rose and charcuterie in a little plaza by the river and so we were named the rose boys.
Back in Biarritz we walked around town just a bit, looking for a fun place to grab some food and hang inside away from the rain. We get into Le Bar Jean, a Spanish tapas style place. The whole time Dave & Kinzi have been raving about how amazing their pintxos were back when they were in St Sebastian. We are headed there next week so I don’t really want that kind of stuff right now when I know I’m going to the land of insane tapas. We get some oysters and wine but Dave and Evan find pieces of shell in theirs and blame it on ameteur shucking. After hanging, drinking wine and eating the oysters, the waiter asks us if we are going to get food. “No thanks, we’re just hanging and finishing up our wine.” He didnt like that and his manager comes over and asks us to leave. We are taking up an inside dinner table during dinner rush. Feel kind of bad but also kind of shocked because thus far everywhere we’ve had a drink or coffee or anything in France we’ve been allowed to stay and hang for as long as we wanted. It’s really no big deal but we walk out of there with our tails between our legs.
We end up eating a delicious meal up the street at a restaurant where the waiter walked us through the entire menu that was written on a chalkboard in French. Evan and I shared a big rib pork chop and some savor wrapped crepe-like burritos with smoked fish and fresh deliciousness, kinda similar to the Gjusta fish plate. Another bottle of wine, we were wining and dining, hitting the good life all over town. Go to bed feeling like it may have been too much wine. “Let’s catch up in the morning and see if we should bust the mission to Bordeaux tomorrow.”
Another no surf day. Big wind and cold with rain falling here and there. Late start to the day. Headache from the wine we had yesterday. Considered going to Bordeaux but decided against it because it was a three hour drive and we didn’t want to spend 6 hours in the car today. Spent time hanging in the house reading. After a lazy morning and relaxing afternoon we got picked up once again to check out the town of Guethary. Drove only like 30 minutes away through sweet little roadspast houses all built with white walls and red beams exposed with matching red roofs. Some are green. It feels like an authentic tiny Basque town.
There’s a little part of town with a couple restaurants and maybe a hotel but really nothing compared to Biarritz. Below this area is a cliff overlooking the ocean below where off in the distance is the wave Parlamentia. Of course it’s too windy still for the wave to be working but you can see the big waves filter in from deep water. The waves can get big there and according to Leo you can experience gnarly hold-downs on wipeouts over there. Maybe we’ll go down to check it out on our way down from Hossegor next week.
We cruise around the neighborhood a little more and then go back to the restaurant area for a little rose. The waiter is a friendly young dude who studied wine in Bordeaux, we take the table rose he recommends. Rose boys continued. It’s absolutely delicious, not sweet, not peachy in color, almost white, super drinkable. Drink the bottle amongst the 4 of us, chat nicely, and head back towards Biarritz.
Back in Biarritz we got some more meat and cheese and another rose and had Dave & Kinzi over for a nice evening. Amazing when you think about how such nice towns with such nice roses are so close to potentially great waves. (The weather hasn't permitted them to us yet.) Quality of life here is pretty good.
9/29 -
Woke up and it’s still raining off and on and definitely still windy. Had a big ass brunch with egg and bacon and we convinced/psyched ourselves up to go surfing after hours watching the water. The waves were big and the conditions unruly. Went out with the idea of having a survival session, don’t get hurt and be selective about what waves you catch. Anything you do catch is a gift because there is so much movement and chaos out there that it is very hard to situate yourself properly.
Battle hard on the paddle out, takes a very long time with duck dive after duck dive, maybe 15 minutes of taking on waves over and over. At last we punch through beyond where the waves are breaking. Man and the elements. Wind is howling, the sky is completely gray and overcast, waves of about 6-8ft roll in random angles. Sometimes you're too far out and sometimes you're too far in and take one or two on the head. Catch a couple making sure to get off the ride while I’m still far out because we definitely do not want to repeat that paddle out. End up really having a good time treating this as a novel experience. Come back shivering after a few hours and put on some spaghetti to warm up!
9/30-
Today the sun finally came out! Perfect timing because it was our day to pick up the rental car that we will have for the next week. Tomorrow we leave Anglet/Biarritz for Hossegor and from there we hit St Sebastian, Spain. We take the 1 hr walk back to the airport to pick up an automatic car, this time, from the gorgeous girl at the counter. We’re kinda joking about how we gotta hang out at the car rental area more and she becomes the muse of Biarritz. Now with a car we’ll be able to drive to the spots around Hossegor and get to know that coastline. Also, we’ll take the car to St Sebastian, drop off the boards and all the luggage, drive back to Biarritz airport (everything is super close) for drop off, then bus to our St Sebastian airbnb. Seems like a great plan to avoid the extra fees of ditching a rental car in a different country, plus the added bonus of seeing the lady at the Hertz again. Super excited with the car, now it feels like a real surf trip.
While we were out with Dave & Kinzi in Biarritz, we ran into two old friends of Evan: Dana and Robert. The parents of kids Evan grew up with in Santa Monica. They invited us to dinner at Bar Jean, the same place we had oysters, so we set off to meet them. They were there with family friends Eve and her two daughters Romi and Bianca, around Evan’s age. They are fluent in French and grew up coming to Biarritz their whole lives and they went to that French school in LA. Romi has been living in France since covid with her local boyfriend. I think she said she’s going to school in Paris. Evan and I share a massive plate of beef that I order medium rare to the horror of the girls. “Here medium rare means just barely cooked like it's almost still raw, not what medium rare means in the US.” They’re right and it’s delicious. The dining experience here was much better this second time around.
Went out for drinks at this cool bar street where all the tables are on the street packed with people and no cars. There we met Romi’s boyfriend and some of his buds, local Biarritz dudes our age. Amazing language barrier, Victor didn’t know any English and his Spanish was ok but we made it work. Chatting with people out and about our age was really fun and a great change of pace. We’d heard about Biarritz’ nightlife but never really saw it with all the stormy weather all week. Now we had found it and with locals. Went out to a nightclub they took us to and danced til 5ish. Cool last day with the sun finally shining.
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