Friday night I took an excursion to the Pays Basque (southwestern France/northwestern Spain) with the study abroad group. First we visited Bayonne (France), a picturesque little town famous for its chocolate. After lunch and a few hours to wander the streets in the light rain, we drank rich cups of hot chocolate and moved on to San Sebastian (Spain) for the night.
In Spain, dinner doesn't start until at least 10:30 p.m., so we got dressed up and went out to the tapas bars and discothèques (nightclubs). The counters of the tapas bars were strewn with plates of small hors d'oeuvres-type snacks--you simply fill up your own plate and pay before you sit down to eat. There's also no imitating Spanish sangria; every glass tasted more like juice than wine. The discothèques started getting crowded around midnight, but we stayed out until 4 or 5 a.m., dancing and walking home on the beach.
Everything in Spain is pretty inexpensive, but the only thing I didn't like was the way everyone smokes inside. My coat reeked by the end of the night. Lots of French people smoke, but hardly ever indoors. And unfortunately, some towns in Spain are notorious for pickpocketing, so I didn't bring my camera to take pictures.
The next day we took the charter bus back to St. Jean-de-Luz, about an hour outside Pau on the Atlantic coast. In the past, my daydreams about the south of France were filled with images exactly like the beach in St. Jean-de-Luz. To finally be there on the soft sand, with sunshine, 70-degree weather and blue sky and sea...words can't describe it. I definitely want to go back soon. There was hardly enough time to relax on the beach for a while, then grab some ice cream and a sandwich and head back to Pau.
I feel like I'm on a 4-month vacation here. No job, no homework (right now, anyway), temperate weather--it's exactly what I hoped for. Despite all the stress, anticipation and paperwork to get here, it's been worth it so far.
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