Arcachon/ Saint-Emilion/ Bordeaux

Before we went to Barcelona, we were invited by Thibaut's parents to spend time in the Bassin d'Arcachon, which is an area on the ocean not too far from Bordeaux.  We spent five days there with his parents, sister and his brother-in-law.  Everyday we had a different activity:

The first day we hiked the Dune du Pyla, which is the tallest sand dune in Europe.  Walking uphill is hard. Walking uphill on sand is even harder. It was a beautiful view from the top, and we had a nice walk on the beach too. 

Day two we took a boat across the Bassin d'Arcachon, and spent the day hiking around, a little over ten kilometers! Thankfully it was all flatland. 

Day three was our lazy beach day, and I loved every minute of it. 

Day four we spent the entire day in Saint-Emilion, which is a really cute little wine village about an hour away from Arcachon.  Thib's parents have friends that live nearby and we all decided to meet for lunch and some sightseeing, and even some wine tasting for the day.  On the way back we visited the Chateau Michel de Montaigne, which is a famous chateau where the author Michel de Montaigne lived in the 1500's.  

Finally, we visited the Oyster shacks, and learned all about how oysters are made.  You might think it's easy, but there's a whole method behind it.  Who knew?  Unfortunately for the others, NOT for me because I hate oysters, there was some kind of oyster plague happening and no one was allowed to eat Arcachon oysters during the time we were there. 

On the last night we decided to stay in Bordeaux since our flight was on Sunday afternoon.  We kind of just wandered around, had dinner and drinks, and most importantly, finally found Thibaut some oysters!

thibs and his dad at dune du pyla

view from the top

walking on the beach

and back up the dune...

Arcachon

our hotel

Saint-Emilion

the wine purchases! 

Bordeaux

finally got them.

Barcelona

Well it's been a very busy couple of weeks for me!  I had three weeks off of school (spring break combined with a reading week to prepare for exams) and I decided that I needed to take advantage of visiting more of Europe while everything is still easily accessible.  I'm going to start at the end because I remember it the most...

Thibaut and I booked a last minute trip to Barcelona. I had been there before in 2006, and he was there when he was little, but neither of us seemed to remember it very well.  We found a really cheap flight from Bordeaux, and booked a room through his hotel company and were on our way.

Our trip was amazing, we had such beautiful weather, saw so many things, ate great food and were just so happy with every place we visited.  Our favorite things were everything that is Gaudi, the famous architect of Barcelona.  It's a great change from all the typical museums, roman ruins etc that most European cities have to offer, Barcelona is much more modern.  Some days we would leave the hotel at 10am and not get back until 1am, there was just too much to do. Our favorite Gaudi things that we visited were :
Casa Battló
Park Guëll
Sagrada Familia cathedral
Casa Mila
Casa Vincens

The two that were well worth the money to go inside were the Casa Battló, and Sagrada Familia.  I stole the first picture below from Wikipedia to give you a better idea of how Sagrada Familia looks inside, it's amazing. We spent at least two hours in each place and listened to every word of the audio guide, it made us notice so many more things that we never would have noticed otherwise.

Otherwise we visited Poble Espanyol, which is an outdoor museum, the BEACH, which was barely relaxing because there were people trying to sell us stuff the entire time (I gave into this cute little asian woman giving 5 euro back massages), and the Barcelona soccer stadium, which is one of the biggest in the world.  Obviously the last one was not for me, but it made Thibaut's year. It was definitely hard to leave this city after only 5 days, we could have stayed another week and never run out of things to do!

Click on the pictures to see the full image:

inside the Sagrada Familia

Sagrada Familia

Casa Battló

inside Casa Battló

roof of casa battló

mosaics in Park Guëll

view from the park 

Casa Vincens 

Poble Espanyol