Bordeaux and It's Sandy Beaches

I went to Bordeaux a couple of years ago with my husband. It was just for the weekend and even though it was in the middle of winter and freezing, I loved it. The food was great and they have the best hot chocolate in the world.

On our return we found a very green city, quite different to what we saw the first time around. We checked into a Mercure hotel which is slightly above Ibis in quality. We didn't have much to do but to go out to dinner. We found a great Italian restaurant called Peppone. There was a huge queue which to me indicates a great restaurant so we got in line and waited 30 minutes to get in. The food was delicious, 3 courses and a local wine and all of it was great. At 50 euros I was happy and after a quick walk around the city headed back to the hotel to sleep after a long day of driving.

We had a second day in Bordeaux but rather than check out the city, which we had seen before, we headed to the beach. Ferbent loves the beach so I agreed that some of our holiday will be visiting cities, for me, and the rest of the time we will be going to the beach. A number of people told me that the beach isn't far from Bordeaux but in fact it is more than an hours drive. There was a lot of traffic but we eventually made to Andernos-Les-Bains. This is a place where people with not a lot of money go to spend their holidays with their young families. There were lots of boats in the water and it wasn't right for swimming. Within the hour we were there the tide went out about 100 metres which was strange. We quickly moved on to the Atlantic Ocean at a small beach near Lege.

It was windy at the beach and not particularly hot. The sand was yellow but fine, not like the pebble beaches around Nice. The water was cool but not cold and we went for a quick dip. There were not a lot of people but I could see it would be popular on a hot day. The beach stretched for miles and some parts looked quite remote. The inland is mainly national parks so it's not very built up. It appeared to be very clean, both the sand and the water. I quite liked it there and would have stayed a bit longer if the weather had been nice.

Next beach was the more well known Cap Ferret. I don't know why it's popular, it's just a busier version of the where we were. It was very windy at this point but we went for a swim. Most people had wet suits on and we were 2 of the crazy few who went in the water. It was nice to freshen up though. There's not much else to see in the region as far as beaches go. If you had a bit of time you could explore them all and I'm sure you could find something very nice. There were a lot of people around so something but have been attracting them. My guess is the price has a lot to do with it as it is a fairly cheap area to stay for a few weeks.

That wasn't for us though, we never stay too long in the one place. We then headed for Biarritz...