France and stuff

Let's see...where to begin? I left Granada last Saturday and spent a total 14 hours travelling by bus to San Sebastian, where I spent my last official night in Spain for the next month. During the ride, I had a connecting bus to switch to but didn't realize it was at a different station in Madrid, so I obviously missed that one, but all I can say about that now is THANK GOD for ticket insurance with ALSA! All worked out in the end and it only meant 1 extra hour of travel time, and NO extra cost to me for a new bus ticket. It was cool to see the andalucian landscape gradually change during the ride. I did the cheesy tourist thing and took pictures from the bus of the sun setting over the green Basque country mountains.

The next day, I crossed the border by car into France and bought cigarettes en la frontera. Driving up the Atlantic coast, we stopped and I got my first view of the Atlantic from the other side. I was thrilled to see signs written in French. We stayed with Pierre's 'aunt and uncle', who are perfectly liberal French hippie types who have a penchant for French beer, an enormous 'herb' garden, and thus a very laid-back approach to life. I spent my first official day in France sitting at a table surrounded by lovely French people, smoking and drinking Rioja and Bourdeaux, eating european pizza, French cheese, and Spanish chorizo in a lovely garden until sundown. There was a break in between where we went to lie in the sunshine near a lake, and I got some guitar time in. I spoke in Spanish the entire time, far too nervous to break out what little French I barely know, but amazingly, my comprehension was quite good! I was able to follow the conversation and participate quite a bit with the help of translation from Pierre, and his aunt spoke decent Spanish so there was that too. I did go to bed more exhausted than I remembered being for a long time - it was the kind of fatigue that comes from being locked into another language, unable to truly follow the conversation of a group of people without putting every ounce of effort into listening and translating and processing the whole time - I think I did pretty damned well, considering we were talking for a total of about 10 hours all-told!

The next day, I got kinda sunburnt on one of the most remote beaches I've seen in my life. We took a break to eat lunch (hamburgers - real, non-Spanish ones!!) and then drove up the coast to the biggest sand dune in Europe (the Dune du Pila). We climbed up the dune and were met with the blazing sun cast over Sahara-sized sand dunes, with the tranquil Atlantic meeting them down at the bottom. Stretching out in the other direction from the ocean were over 300 miles of French forest, one of the biggest in Europe as well. Pierre and I sat on the dunes taking sun for a while, left and said goodbye to our wonderful hosts, and drove 2 hours to his house in the countryside near Bourdeaux. We had one day of chillax-down-time yesterday, and today he's off to work while I try to soak up the Frenchness.

As for talleys: so far, I've tried 3 French beers, all of which were excellent and one of which I was already very fond (Stella Artois); I've eaten locally raised duck confit (amazing) and ground horse (very similar to hamburger but with a distinctively different flavor); I've bought bread at a boulangerie; and I've noticed so many similarities between France and New Orleans, France and the United States, the French language and the English language...this looks to be the beginning of an eye-opening holiday.