They call it a Dune (welcome to France Part III)

Having spent a good portion of the last three years in Jodhpur, a desert one would think I’d know what a sand dune is… either I don’t or the French people have an extremely warped sense of definitions.

Day two of my stay in Bordeaux, I go to work along with dad, he goes for his meetings and I go to my office. I’m given some work that I am doing, some time in the middle the boss comes along to see how I’m doing, she sits for a while and then goes back expecting me to finish the work by evening. While leaving she says that my dad’s colleague has invited me for lunch and I should be at the gate at 1330. It’s good, why say no to a free lunch. Come 1330 I go with them for lunch to this typical road corner French restaurant that are very expensive (I know they are on the road, they are in fact on every street corner in the country and they are all expensive, at least for me) and there we sit to have lunch. The menu is in French, I can read a few key words here and there but the majority of it was like Greek or Arabic or for all you know French to me. As for starters I just followed my dads que asked for some salad which was a huge plate of leaves with some tomatoes and some ham thrown in and topped of with a half fried egg. Different, interesting, edible and to an extent tasty also, the main course however I thought copying that would be a little too much, so I decided to use my French reading ability and looked for the most recognizable thing on the menu and I found the word ‘poisson’ which I knew meant fish and along with that there was the word ‘riz’ which is rice. So I knida put two and two together and thought this must be some fish and rice preparation which is usually safe. What came was fish… and rice…., but as far from a fish and rice preparation you can ever get. There were six different varieties of fried or dry cooked sea food and a small bowl of bolied rice, which would also be quite fine since they had prawns and shrimps and other fish that I have eaten and are quite edible only if I was someplace else like India or even Singapore for that matter. The trouble with the French is that they insist on eating everything with a fork and knife, now I could not for the life of me imagine how one can eat a king prawn with its shell on with a fork and knife or how can you eat a fish that is full of thorns with a fork and knife. So helplessly I ate what could be eaten, ate all of the little bowl of rice that was there and the shrimp and left the rest.

Then came back to the office finished the work I was given mailed it to the boss and then left with dad to back. On the way we decided to go sight seeing so we then turned around to go change since both of us were in suits, it would be a little funny roaming on the beach in suits. So we went back changes and then headed around 65Km away towards this place called ‘Dune du pyla’. From what I know of dunes they are humps of sand that have a tendency to shift normally found in a desert and are very misleading as far as direction is concerned.

Headed there we were driving down this road that seemed like a mountain road, lush green trees on both sides, clear blue sky some fir cones lying around on the side of the road and the GPS takes us through all of this and then to a parking lot where we stop get off and walk another 30-40 meters to see what they call a dune. It is a massive mountain of sand around 100 meters high and extending till as far as I could see. On this ‘dune’ they had built a permanent staircase for people to climb it. We went up and the scenery only got more beautiful because on one side of this dubious mountain of sand was thick dense forest and on the other was the wide open sea with the sun setting in the horizon. Then taking inspiration from a high spirited golden Labrador and a seemingly high owner we decided that the appropriate way to go down the dune was not by taking the stairs, so we half ran half walked half tumbled down the 100 meters of sand… it was fun :D 

   

Then we went to this small beach town called Arcachon which is a small peaceful strip of beach with a cool sea breeze. We walks along the beach for a while admired the scene and then decided to head back home.

On the way back we remembered that there are no clothe hangers in the room so we should stop by at some place to get some and we would have to do it on the way because it was already 2030 and most of these shops close at 2130 or 2200hrs. I changed the destination on the GPS to a hyper market that was on the way back (you have such a setting called points of interest en route) if found a hyper market called Auchan a familiar name so I keyed it in and we were on our way. Somewhere 25Km from Bordeaux it asked us to exit the motorway, we complied and then it took us to some town that I doubt will even be there on the map, through streets that seemed to have been formed by the last car that passed being. Without option we complied, and one second we are moving between what seems like two warehouses and the next moment out of the blue a huge outlet of Auchan right in front of us just like that, impressed with the system we went got hangers and some other stuff and it was straight back to the room after a quick bite at McDs.     

That's all for today... more later