Saint-Jean-de-Luz

From Nice we headed off to Saint-Jean-de-Luz.  I believe that this is the least known of all the places that we went so I made you all a map showing our journey around France:

As you can see, Saint-Jean-de-Luz is located on the Atlantic coast, very close to the Spanish border and thus the Pyrenees Mountains.  That region, with it's infusion of Spanish culture into French culture, is called the Basque region.
We spent nearly 10 hours on the train to get from Nice to Saint-Jean-de-Luz with a small stopover in Bordeaux.  We arrived there at about 9pm and the very first thing that we did, although it was slightly rainy, was go straight to the beach of course.  The sunset there was amazing!

And as it got darker:

From there, we went to our hostel, which was more on the edge of town.  One thing that I really loved about Saint-Jean-de-Luz, that I noticed the very first day we were there, was that it appealed to all of my senses, especially scent.  The tropical plants smelled amazing and seemed to be everywhere.
The next morning we walked back into town on a path overlooking the ocean, the town, and the mountains.

Reed was so excited by it all.  He was running ahead and dodging in and out of bushes to get better views.  It was cute.

The coastline was very rocky but really beautiful.  I took a lot of pictures.

Right by this little rocky inlet area above, we found stairs leading down onto the rocks:

Ok, so looking at the picture above, you may notice that I am wearing a dress.  Furthermore, you may ask yourself what kind of silly person would where a dress to go hike and climb over a bunch of rocks.  Well, to be fair, I didn't know that we would be hiking around.  I was expecting to be walking on roads and such and then hanging out by the beach.
We sat down on that big rock formation above and had some lunch.

From there, we had to decide between going back up and hiking around on the path or making our way around the rocky coast.  Being the adventurers that we are, we decided on the coast.

There were a lot of tide pools and Reed was running around to all of them taking pictures of all of the things living in them.  I didn't look too much although it was fun to see the crabs scurrying around everywhere.
We continued on.

The rock formations there were so interesting.  It almost makes one want to be a geologist.

We finally found another stairway up and looked back on what we'd walked over.

And here's the town:

Once we got over to town, we grabbed some lunch from a stand, and after spilling a whole bunch of chocolate on my coat, we went to the beach.
It was becoming a very lovely sunny day so the beach was very enjoyable.  We started out at the beach right below the town.

After sitting there for a bit, Reed wanted to move down to a beach that he thought had a little bit bigger waves.  I didn't really want to swim that day and deal with all the sand and saltiness, so I rested on the beach while Reed swam.

I meanwhile, after my horrible sunburn in Nice, did all that I could to stay out of the sun.  I'm sure I looked completely ridiculous but it worked pretty well.

I eventually came out of my sun refuge and walked a bit into the ocean.

Shortly after this photo was taken a big wave came up and I fell down getting the skirt of my dress kind of soaked.  Reed thought it was hilarious, and the other people on the beach stared at me.
We then wandered around town.  We saw the outside of the church where Louis XIV married Maria Theresa of Spain.  And then we had a Basque dinner.  I got some traditional Basque chicken and Reed got a lobster dish that he really liked.

We then enjoyed another beautiful sunset over the beach.

Reed was very sad that we had to leave the next day and wanted to think of a way to stay longer, but we couldn't.  I had to pack up to leave Chambéry three days later.