Sand dunes and midnight trains

In my opinion, any vacation that begins with Journey is guaranteed to be at least moderately successful. In our case, we got really lucky and it turned out to be one of the best trips of my life, and here in several parts is a recap that I hope can nearly do it justice.

One Lauren J. Metz and I took a midnight train to Bordeaux last Friday night. No matter how many terrible trips I have with cramped overheated (or under-heated) night busses or trains, there’s always a sense of allure and mystery to the whole experience. I don’t know if it’s the quietness of your surroundings or the difference of the scenery lit up by moonlight but for me it’s an interesting mix of calming and exciting. This combination of emotions usually leaves me staring out the window for hours, alternating between thinking about my life and planning the upcoming trip in my head. This trip was easily the most painless of my night travels (aka not Venice) since we had sufficient legroom, cushy seats and “Don’t Stop Believing” at the ready on my ipod. We both managed to sleep for most of the ride and got the pleasure of waking up to a beautiful French sunrise from the panoramic train windows. Bordeaux at 8 AM was impeccably clean, impressively grandiose and completely empty. We found our way to the hotel pretty easily and dropped off our bags until check in. From there we booked it to the Office of Tourism to get our bearings on what exactly we’d be doing that weekend. In a surprisingly easy encounter we decided on visiting the Atlantic coast that afternoon and booking a wine tour for Sunday. Thankfully cafes started opening up around this time allowing us to get our morning fix of caffeine and carbs. When sufficiently revved up for the day we took to exploring Bordeaux, finding the staples of an early morning classy French ville…barred up stores and empty streets. We stumbled upon a cool church and some possible dinner locations before heading back to the hotel to officially get settled in. Our room was cute, with a window view of a garden, a real shower and of course our double bed since a couples trip through the wine and chateau regions of France is basically a honeymoon. On a tight schedule we booked it to the train station and missed our train in a startlingly similar fashion to the whole Alicante debacle. This one was a whole lot easier to clean up and just involved us waiting another hour to board a different train. With our newfound time Lauren and I took to the streets to search for the legendary pain au chocolat that’s supposed to be as ‘big as your tête’. While our pastry remained illusive, we found quite the array of seedy shops in the area of town the guidebook deemed ‘dicey’. With our quota of bad punned rubber duckies with ‘duck me’ signs on them we headed back to the train station to ensure a seat on train number two. It had been a drizzly morning and we were excited to see that the train to Arcachon, a city on the lower Atlantic coast was heading towards nothing but blue skies.

The guidebook which became our Bible of the trip, gave Arcachon a rave review that made us pretty excited to get a taste of the town and sink our feet into the largest sand dune in Europe, but again timing wasn’t going to make it easy for us. The bus we needed to catch was leaving four minutes after the train arrived and we had no idea where anything was! Lauren used her map sense to point us directly where we needed to be and BAM we were on that bus with three minutes to spare. We weaved through some of the most interestingly designed houses I’ve seen yet in France but I couldn’t find a common aesthetic to link them other than a slight feeling of off-season abandonment. Most of the homes in the city have daring landscaping or wacky names engraved on the walls and more often than not empty driveways and shut up windows, which makes me think that they’re mostly summer homes. As it does in any country, the first glimpse of the ocean doubled our excitement and made us bounce in our seats, ready to go. The bus schedule back became an afterthought as we raced towards the colossal dune we could see poking through the pine trees. Fearing we wouldn’t make it up without a little sustenance we grabbed some lackluster paninis and made our way through the touristy shops that sold shirts with cat faces and leaping dolphins. No matter how much you prepare yourself for a natural phenomenon like the redwood forests or Rocky Mountains, they always has a way of knocking your socks off. In this case, the dune literally did take our breath away and compel us to pack up our shoes and socks and ditch the staircase to climb up the side like the wilderness people we are.

Whoops, a few problems.

First and foremost, the only thing wilderness about me at that point was that I had forgotten to shave that morning and had a minor case of windblown hair. For some reason dune climbing inspired me to wear a black wool sweater vest and my new leather bag. Lauren wasn’t much better off with pants that refused to stay rolled up and her leather bag which doesn’t have a zipper. Enter rain. As soon as we got to taking the completely necessary jumping pics at the base of the dune the light drizzle turned into a steady rain and before we knew it we were soaked and sandy halfway up the steepest dune I’ve ever seen. From this point on, the entire dune experience becomes a wonderful blur of dark skies, laughter and lost inhibitions. You know when you’re in a situation that is just so incredibly ridiculous that everyone experiencing it has the exact same “are you serious??” look on their face? That was how this was. The wind was blowing so hard that it didn’t matter a grown man was running around in a diaper. The clouds were rolling in so fast and dark that it wasn’t a big deal that people were tripping down the side of the dune headfirst. So of course when the hail started pummeling all of us it definitely didn’t matter that Lauren and I were screaming our heads off, laughing uncontrollably as we tumbled and jumped our way around and down the dune praying our cameras would make it past the first day. At the base of the dune after having to go back and find a rogue Liongirl Peterson buried in the sand we realized that we were wet and cold and wanted to be on the bus that left in approximately six minutes from the front of the park. Unfortunately down at the bottom, how you acted actually did matter and we didn’t quite transition fast enough to fit in. Still shoeless, soaking wet in our somewhat dressy attire we sprinted past gawking families and barking dogs, trying not to squeal too loudly about how heinous we must have looked. Literally steaming from the humid day, we made it to the bus on time and gingerly put our shoes back on our sandy feet to appear somewhat civilized. There was absolutely no way to do so while reviewing the pictures, so we gave in to being terribly embarrassing Americans in hysterics on the back of the bus. That’s something I should probably clarify right now, for some reason when Lauren and I left Aix en Provence, our French ‘attempt to be quiet and sophisticated’ mindsets stayed put leaving us completely out of control ninety percent of the time. As much as we were stared down-nosed at by the locals, it only enhanced our experience and Lauren helped to remind me that you only live once, so go ahead burp on that park bench. (Or drop that change in the hostel as much as you want Sabrina!…Or 20 euro in the popcorn machine…Or go all out and grab an ear?)

We were all set to catch an early train back to Bordeaux to clean up and get some downtime before dinner but then we saw the skies clear up and the ocean sparkle right in front of us. We pounded the stop button immediately and waddled off the bus, shoes in tow once again. Although we now had blue skies, the wind was still pretty strong forcing us to keep our jackets on while we took our inaugural first toe dips in the other side of the Atlantic. We saved some oysters lives, enjoyed the sun and suddenly there we were standing in front of the largest beached jellyfish I’ve ever seen! It was clear orange and humongous and I’m pretty sure we gawked at it for a solid twenty minutes taking a series of escalating photos climaxing with Liongirl touching the jellyfish. With the backdrop of the sand and ocean available our next move was pretty natural, setting up my tripod and taking tandem jumping pics. Unfortunately I haven’t mastered taking multiple shots at once so after every shot I had to run to the camera, set it up again and run back for the shot.

We took about twenty-five.

There was a family sitting on a ledge nearby, obviously somewhere between amused and disgusted at our blatant disregard of any and everyone else. Aside from the already outrageous scene, almost every jump set us off into another round of breathless hysteria ending in a poorly timed collision that probably sprained roast beef of my left foot, evening out my already injured right ankle from a field jump gone wrong the week before. A surprisingly low number of the pictures turned out leaving us to snap close ups of billowing scarves or dramatic black and whites instead. When we were too wind burnt to stay at the beach any longer we opted to walk the rest of the way back into town, photographing the beautiful houses and trees that lined the quiet streets of the city. This took quite some time and when we finally reached the heart of the city to find ice cream we were walking (and looking) like zombies. All our trials throughout the day were rewarded by stumbling upon the most incredible crepe/ice cream/gaufre stand ever, producing an impossibly delicious nutella et chantilly waffle that left us in a food coma, covered in whipped cream smiling with satisfaction. I’m pretty confident that with our food smeared faces, dirtied damp clothes and large bags we could have made some phat cash playing the homeless card but we sadly we had to move it on back to Bordeaux.

Other than our mutual train crush and the bottle of wine we weren’t sure we were allowed to have on the train, the ride back was pretty uneventful and we were both on a path to rid ourselves of the sand that had worked its way through every article of clothing we had on. After showers and an episode of Arrested Development we were finally ready to get back to civilization and have our first dinner of spring break. After much indecision we ended up sitting outside at a cute café looking out at a big square with a fountain, basically the ideal setting to begin with. We splurged and did a three-course meal with wine and just enjoyed the evening. With another busy day planned, we headed home early and crashed as soon as our heads hit the pillows.