La Dune du Pyla, Arcachon
Tallest sand dune in all Europe
As part of one of our program excursions, we went to Arcachon, which is about an hour or so from Bordeaux. There, I got to climb the tallest sand dune in all Europe!!! It was intense, but the view a the end was magical!
Place de la Bourse, Bordeaux
I absolutely love it here! Bordeaux is amazing and I think I made a great decision coming here than to any other French city. I hope one day I can live here! To dream…
Toulouse
I believe this is the first trip I made with some of the friends I made here in my program. We decided to go somewhere nearby not too far/pricy. So we decided on Toulouse. Again, we left at the crack of dawn, just so we could have more time to actually see the city (it’s even bigger than Bordeaux). From the moment we arrived, the city was something else. Beautiful, of course, but completely different from Bordeaux. It has more of a Spanish influence, which makes sense since the architecture shows that. Hence, why they call it the “Pink City” Basically, we just saw a bunch of churches (all gorgeous), museums, random other places. Also, they have bridges with the most amazing view!!!! Loved it! We did a whole bunch of walking and very little resting. And I should add, I decided to wear sandals…not the best idea for my feet. We had lunch at this very nice spot, kind of hidden, but it was packed. Pretty much your typical French restaurant. The food was great and not too pricy. Lunch here tends to be stretched out by… A LOT. We ended up finishing maybe like 2 hours later. And then for dinner, right before we left, we got sandwiches from this one shop close by the downtown area, which were very affordable and tasty if I may say. Toulouse was a great way to get our feet wet in starting to travel. Definitely manageable in a day, but probably more enjoyable in a weekend trip.
Carcassone
So I decided to add some details to my trips as to what I did, etc. Some of my friends and I decided to go on a day trip to Carcassone. We left Saturday at the break of dawn (at least it felt like it aka around 6 AM which means getting up at 5ish to catch the tram to the train station). We got into the city around 10/11. We got maps and made our way to the actual Cité de Carcassone. It was amazing! The Cité itself is pretty big. Inside, it’s like a mini-city. A bunch of stores, restaurants, etc, for all your tourist-y needs! We walked all around the Cité (which was free-thank you French student ID) and got to see some pretty amazing views of the whole city. After we finished we got sandwiches from one of the carts around the Cité. We then went to the actual centre ville (downtown) area, which pretty much consisted of churches, old buildings, etc. We finished off with dinner in this cute restaurant close to the train station and a pretty good pizza. Overall, Carcassonne was a nice place to visit. Definitely a nice day trip.
