We woke up well-prepared to start our big tour. We had tickets for the TGV high-speed train to Bordeaux, where we would pick up our rental car, which we had reserved through Costco. The train was leaving at mid-day so we had plenty of time to get checked out and get a car to the Montparnasse station.

In fact we were early enough to grab some breakfast, along with some sandwiches for lunch on the train, as I had noticed a mention that there would not be a dining car. We figured out roughly where we needed to be and settled down to people-watch for a bit.

Despite being so early, we weren't really sure how to tell when and exactly where to go out to the platform. You know how you can never understand announcements in train stations and airports. When we realized people were going through the doors, we had to hustle and get out there with all our luggage, and then ensure we were standing in place to board the correct car.

Luckily we were able to get all our luggage stowed, even though we had to lug (see what I did there) it up to the upper deck of the car. We found two seats together in the nearly full car. We were somewhat settled in when a couple came and said we were in their seats. Oh, we hadn't even realized it was assigned seating. Fortunately, they were able to take our seats, which were together, farther down the car.

The trip to Bordeaux Saint-Jean station by TGV is about 2.5 hours compared to about 6 by car, thus our decision to take it and drop the car there. However, when we arrived, we were informed that we were late and the reservation was canceled.

Here is where our day took a very bad turn.

Here is what happened. We booked Enterprise rental through Costco, based on one train schedule. Then, booking train tickets, we found a later train and booked that. But we did not update the car rental pickup.

Meanwhile, the staff at Enterprise decided to punish us for having booked through a third party. They told us they had no cars available. My husband contacted Enterprise corporate who sent him to two different branches, only for him to arrive and be told there were no cars. Meanwhile I was checking the other rental offices in the station. A couple had cars to rent but for about double the cost.

We were pretty distraught, pissed off, and hangry by this point. We feared being stranded in Bordeaux for the night, throwing off the rest of our plans. Then we called Costco directly — not sure if somehow we learned to do this, or if it finally just occurred to us. This was the answer — they said to use the website and make a new reservation and take that to the Enterprise desk. Miraculously, there were any number of cars we could choose from now!

At least we got some real French fries from McDonald's, just to see. We thought our local ones were better, probably because they use more salt here in the U.S.

Finally we got on our way to the seaside town of Arcachon, just over an hour away. We checked in to Hotel Point France, near the water so you could hear and smell it.

We were upstairs (all the rooms are, maybe) and the room opened onto a wood patio with dividers between rooms, then onto a shared deck and grassy area that was a green roof over the bike rental shop below at street level. The room was nice, with good AC and a big comfy bed.

La Plage d'Arcachon

We got into town later than expected due to the rental car woes, but we still enjoyed walking along the beach and dinner on the water. I don't remember the restaurant and I won't venture a guess since it was just OK and I wouldn't want to be wrong.

In the morning we walked around a bit up through the town. I am sure there are plenty of tourists, especially in the summer, but just a block or two off the beach was a perfectly ordinary town with people doing their jobs. There seemed to be quite a few properties being renovated, so I guess that points to a decent economy.

Everything we saw in town was neat and tidy. We found a little grocery and grabbed some bread and fruit to go with the ham and cheese we had left over from our previous day's breakfast. We ate out on our little patio then prepared to depart.

Dune of Pilat

The original plan had been to visit the Dune of Pilat the previous evening, before driving into Arcachon. We wanted to catch the sunset from up there, but were delayed so long by the car fiasco that we didn't get to, but luckily we had time to see it on our way to our next destinations.

I have played on the sand dunes at Kitty Hawk NC, but I was not really prepared for the scale of this dune. The southwest coastline of France has beautiful beaches, like in Arcachon, but no dunes. Here, where the mouth of Arcachon Bay meets the ocean current, sandbars form. At low tide, the exposed sand had blown to form the dune.

The navigation got a little confused, but we eventually found the parking lot. Getting to the dune, we passed some play areas, shops, restrooms, and an information center. As we followed signs to the dune, we passed a lot of people who had stopped to pour the sand from their shoes.

The trail rose up from the woods into pure sand, and where it started to get difficult to climb, we joined the line of visitors using a rope to ascend the steep stairway that is permanently (I assume) installed. It's a bit of a haul, but the view from the top is spectacular.

It is hard to get a sense of altitude from the photos, but it is over 100 meters tall. I really tried to capture this, but it looks almost like you are just at the beach. We walked around at the top for a bit but didn't venture too far since we had a schedule to keep. At the bottom, we too paused to empty the impressive amount of sand our shoes had collected.

Espelette village

From Pilat we headed to Espelette, home of the famous Basque pepper. Well, not really the home, as I am reading that the peppers themselves are native to the Americas but were brought to France in the 1500s. But now they are endemic to Basque cooking and the growing region is protected and controlled the same way as wines and cheeses.

Of course we had never been there so we were just following the navigation instructions. We were driving on tiny, winding roads that did not seem to support the presence of an internationally famous town. But as I look at the map now, I see there are better roads to get there so I suppose it was an optimization from our starting point.

Pizza Amaiana

I'm not sure what I expected to find in the town, but I would say that it was much smaller than I imagined. There were two main streets. We arrived around 2 p.m., maybe, and there were no restaurants open. We did get a take-out sandwich from the window at Amaiana just as they were closing.

Boutique Bipertegia

There were stores open though, and I think I may have done as much shopping here as anywhere. I definitely had to get ground pepper to bring home for myself and as gifts. We also got gifts and some fabric for ourselves at a textiles shop. We have not yet sewn our tablecloth even though it's basically a straight hemming job.

Labea Brasserie (Basque beer)

The buildings all were in the same style and colors, with strings of dried peppers hanging everywhere. It reminded us of our local faux-Bavarian village, only real. We had a nice view down the street from our outside table at Labea Brasserie, where we stopped to sample some Basque beer.

There is of course a festival celebrating the pepper, but it would happen in October and did not fit our plans on the drive out nor back. It was probably just as nice to enjoy the town more quietly rather than fight the crowds.

EGIATEGIA underwater winery, Ciboure

Onward to a wine tasting. But this was a unique one, and I don't recall how I even learned of it. We drove to the tasting room of EGIATEGIA in Ciboure, still in French Basque country.

We had a reservation but were told that it might get canceled if there weren't enough people for the English language tour. We might also have been late to arrive, and we did not get a tour. But we got personalized attention and a tasting nonetheless.

Fort de Socoa

The weather was beautiful and we sampled the wines outside on the deck, overlooking the Fort de Socoa and the Bay of Saint-Jean-de-Luz. But I haven't told you what makes these wines unique: our hostess pointed out to a point at the bay breakwater and said, that's where we age our wine — underwater.

That's right — they place the wine in tanks, seal and invert them, then anchor them in the bay. The idea was to use the sea's nearly constant temperature, pressure, darkness, and the motion of the waves to do the secondary fermentation for making sparkling wines.

They get a very nice result. We took away a bottle of rosé. We also sampled a white and especially appreciated another of their wines, a pale red, more red than rosé, that was a bit cloudy. I don't see it on their website now so I don't know the difference in the process. I doubt it was just a matter of filtering or not of the same wine, as this was in a higher price tier.

We were treated to some education about the grape growing region and their processes. The tanks they use are plastic, and they were proud of the sustainability work they do. Each tank can only be used for a few years, but after that they are recycled into kayaks and other goods.

We also really enjoyed chatting with our hostess about the Basque country that we were in. We had heard about the Basque language and history — the people have been there so long now that no one knows their origin. The language does not have roots with any other language. She told us that there are efforts to preserve and revive the language, with public schools now conducted using it.

I will risk showing some ignorance of history here but my understanding is that France and Spain both tried to diminish the Basque culture in favor of a nationalized one. For some time it was forbidden to speak native languages. And there were separatist movements and violence as a result.

But today, it seemed to me, that the people are left alone and the culture is embraced. The cynic in me says that this is because of the economic potential, including tourism.

Our destination for the night was San Sebastián, Pais Vasco (Basque Country), Spain. Continue reading to learn about things not to do, and also some great things to do there.