We (predictably) slept later in Bordeaux than we should have and had to change our plans around a little. We took an afternoon train to Bayonne, only about an hour away, but things were starting to close when we got there.
Bayonne is the capital of the French Basque region, and is known for its nearby beaches and its chocolate. It's a small town, but a little bigger than I expected, and its whole feel surprised me a little: my friend aptly described it as "Strasbourg meets New Orleans." The architecture, anyway, shows this pretty clearly. Most buildings have similar structure and coloring as those in Strasbourg with that pseudo-German feel, but there are some modifications that seem a lot more modern.
The streets are small, medieval, windy and cobblestoney, but the people are much more open and lively than in Strasbourg.
That cathedral in the background is St Marie; it's large but not a particularly lovely or interesting church.
Again, in Bayonne there aren't exactly a lot of things to visit, but we were mostly interested in getting the feel of the town, to see if it was different from the rest of France. It wasn't, much, just perhaps more friendly, but it definitely has a sense of independence. Also, everything is written in French, Spanish and Basque - not necessarily in that order, and not necessarily the same order every time. Here is a picture of a street sign with all the languages, then one of a menu in Basque, so you can see how the words are put together. It's kind of a crazy language.
So we wandered around the city and looked in a lot of shops dedicated to typical types of goods and food of the area. We sampled chocolates (with red pepper, another specialty of the region), apple cider, a few cheeses, and some wine. We also went into a couple kitschy souvenir stores that had traditional Basque berets, flags and other things.
There were little plaques around the town talking about the history, and some of them were rather interesting: for example, the medieval walls that can still be seen around parts of the city are not exactly the city limits, as most are, but rather were built because there was a leper colony outside the city. It was raining on and off while we were there, so my pictures came out rather grey, but it was very pretty and quaint overall.
1 comment:
So... I would imagine that Bayonne, France is much more interesting than where Trevor and I will be getting married: Bayonne, NJ! Hmm..pas de questions.
I actually just had some Lindt chocolate with red peppers in it - we had the management of Lindt come in, and they were kind enough to shower us with chocolate. There was also one with chili peppers and cherry combined! I didn't taste that, I am not a fan of fake fruit in my chocolate.
Sounds like you had fun!
A bientot :)
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