If you've driven all the way to France you might as well stop somewhere else on the way back.
✉ A postcard from Saint-Jean-de-Luz
On my summer holidays we went to Saint-Jean-de-Luz which is in France but only just. It is six miles from Spain on the coast and it has a big bay and ice creams. It is not a fun place to park but we managed.
The place to go is thebeach, it is long and very sandy. A lot of people were playing beach volleyball because there is a lot of space. The sun was starting to set over the fort and lighthouse at the far end of the bay and it was very pretty. But nobody was in the sea because the purple flag was flying. The purple flag means JELLYFISH! or in this case Portuguese men o' war because they had invaded. I have never seen a purple flag before it is serious, if one stings you in precisely the wrong place you could die. The lifeguards sounded a big horn when they saw someone wading in. It must be gutting if you come here for a week's holiday and a blue bag of venom stops you going in the water.
The biggest building on the promenade is the casino, there is always a casino although this one closed a while back. It has a boardwalk and a pergola and little shops. We bought ice creams from a Glaces Lopez van on the promenade, they've been going since 1924. I had citron in a cornet, it was yummy and only €1.70 which is a total bargain. We also bought Gâteaux Basques from Maison Adam in the high street but only the small ones, I liked the custard filling best. Maison Adam are most famous for their macarons, they once made them for the wedding of Louis XIV and Marie Theresa of Spain which took place here in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in 1660. Now that's an origin story!
The highstreet is proper characterful, all narrow with brightly-painted shutters. It's also a bit designer in places, such is the tourist clientele, although if you buy surf gear you have to go out of town to use it because the bay doesn't get big waves. At the lower end are a lot of outdoor bar tables, London has nothing on this, also the marina where the nice boats are. The smart dockfront museum is the House of the Infanta, this because Marie Theresa spent the night before her wedding here (Maison Louis XIV is just round the corner). The harbour is also the mouth of the Nivelle but it is not a famous river.
On the way back to the car we passed the public fronton, which is the place where they play pelote. I first learned about pelote in my Tricolore textbook and now here I was watching two Basque lads hurling a ball really hard against a wall using their long curved xistera. Then they had to stop playing because a truck arrived with tree trunks for tonight's Basque Strengthevent, a display of athletic sawing, bale lifting, sack racing and tug of war. We didn't have time to stay but what with the pelote, games and gâteaux we had learned that Saint-Jean-de-Luz is just as Basque as towns the other side of the Spanish border. [10 photos]
