At the beach......
We finally found cooler weather when we returned to the place that Al fell in love with France five years ago. The small town of Etaple-sur-Mer is just across the river from the posher seaside resort of Le Touquet-Paris Plage. We spent our first night in France there and Al had been fantasizing about returning to it ever since, just to see if he'd like it as much the second time. We were not disappointed.
The B&B where we had stayed on the first visit had been converted into a hotel but the tourist office found us another place to stay, in a residential area in a house that had been converted to have four guest rooms upstairs. Our room had a little tiny kitchen corner and the window opened to the west, which meant that we would get the evening breezes after the sun went down and we could open the shutters.
The restaurant where we had our first meal in France was still there. We went there for Friday lunch and the food was as wonderful as we remembered. The daily special featured a plate with four pieces of fish, each different and each totally unidentifiable but each cooked exactly to perfection. The dessert that came with the special was strawberries according to the server, but when it came, it was a huge bowl of perfectly ripe strawberries on a bed of light creamy custard accompanied by those light crispy cookies that the French do so well.
We arrived on Thursday and departed on Monday. This meant that we could see the entire impact of weekenders on the area. Le Touquet is called Paris-Plage (beach of Paris) because it is the closest beach area to the city of Paris. Two hours by toll road from the western edge of the metropolis. This means that the town that is pretty quiet on Thursday night is hopping by Friday night and jammed on Saturday and Sunday. The Parisian family that shared our breakfast table for two mornings said they didn't plan on leaving Sunday evening until around eight because it was such a short drive.
The beaches at Le Touquet are wide and flat and filled with bodies. They also have numerous 'clubs' where you can leave your 5 to 10-year-old child to be entertained for a while. Each 'club' has an area marked off with a single strand of chain that any unhappy little kid could walk right under, but this must not be a problem. Each cub seemed to have different things to entertain the 'members'. One club had several trampolines, none of which had any of the safety equipment you would see at a commercial operation in the US. Just little kids happily bouncing away without anyone watching really closely. Apparently they don't have personal injury lawyers in France or maybe the kids just behave themselves better. Some of the clubs take the little ones down to the water. One adult might have charge of 12 or 15 little darlings, each dressed with a vest or T-shirt in the same color to identify the group. How many adults would it take to keep a group that size in some semblance of order in the US? Much less take them down to romp in the waves. We just shook our heads as we watched the kids actually doing what their leaders told them to do.
There are other beaches along this section of coast, but as the Parisian woman told us, they were not as good as Le Touquet. We liked a couple of the others better because, firstly, they didn't charge an outrageous fee for parking and secondly, there were restaurants along the beachfront. But apparently they were not as fashionable but it was hard to tell because they were so crowded.
Going to the beach is a real production for many families. First you need an umbrella or two, maybe three. If the wind is blowing, you also need one of those collapsible sun screens. Then you need beach towels, coolers, maybe a folding picnic table or perhaps just beach chairs. Certainly you need a football (soccer ball to those of you in the US) and a kite plus sand buckets and shovels for the little ones. Maybe an inflatable water toy or a boogie board (or whatever they call them in France.) I truly don't know how they get all the gear and the family too in those little cars. Watching some of the groups get out of their cars reminded me of all those circus clowns that used to get out of a Volkswagen when I was a kid.
As if traffic wasn't bad enough on the roundabout by the bridge that leads to Le Touquet from Etaples, on Saturday there was a market. Total gridlock, but we scored a parking place just a block away from the market where I managed to find some light weight tops. Clothes that I can wear in Arizona in the summer time just don't make it here in the high humidity and the lady from Paris has been warning us how hot it will be in the city for our visit. Almost as if she were warning us not to go.....
We finally found cooler weather when we returned to the place that Al fell in love with France five years ago. The small town of Etaple-sur-Mer is just across the river from the posher seaside resort of Le Touquet-Paris Plage. We spent our first night in France there and Al had been fantasizing about returning to it ever since, just to see if he'd like it as much the second time. We were not disappointed.
The B&B where we had stayed on the first visit had been converted into a hotel but the tourist office found us another place to stay, in a residential area in a house that had been converted to have four guest rooms upstairs. Our room had a little tiny kitchen corner and the window opened to the west, which meant that we would get the evening breezes after the sun went down and we could open the shutters.
The restaurant where we had our first meal in France was still there. We went there for Friday lunch and the food was as wonderful as we remembered. The daily special featured a plate with four pieces of fish, each different and each totally unidentifiable but each cooked exactly to perfection. The dessert that came with the special was strawberries according to the server, but when it came, it was a huge bowl of perfectly ripe strawberries on a bed of light creamy custard accompanied by those light crispy cookies that the French do so well.
We arrived on Thursday and departed on Monday. This meant that we could see the entire impact of weekenders on the area. Le Touquet is called Paris-Plage (beach of Paris) because it is the closest beach area to the city of Paris. Two hours by toll road from the western edge of the metropolis. This means that the town that is pretty quiet on Thursday night is hopping by Friday night and jammed on Saturday and Sunday. The Parisian family that shared our breakfast table for two mornings said they didn't plan on leaving Sunday evening until around eight because it was such a short drive.
The beaches at Le Touquet are wide and flat and filled with bodies. They also have numerous 'clubs' where you can leave your 5 to 10-year-old child to be entertained for a while. Each 'club' has an area marked off with a single strand of chain that any unhappy little kid could walk right under, but this must not be a problem. Each cub seemed to have different things to entertain the 'members'. One club had several trampolines, none of which had any of the safety equipment you would see at a commercial operation in the US. Just little kids happily bouncing away without anyone watching really closely. Apparently they don't have personal injury lawyers in France or maybe the kids just behave themselves better. Some of the clubs take the little ones down to the water. One adult might have charge of 12 or 15 little darlings, each dressed with a vest or T-shirt in the same color to identify the group. How many adults would it take to keep a group that size in some semblance of order in the US? Much less take them down to romp in the waves. We just shook our heads as we watched the kids actually doing what their leaders told them to do.
There are other beaches along this section of coast, but as the Parisian woman told us, they were not as good as Le Touquet. We liked a couple of the others better because, firstly, they didn't charge an outrageous fee for parking and secondly, there were restaurants along the beachfront. But apparently they were not as fashionable but it was hard to tell because they were so crowded.
Going to the beach is a real production for many families. First you need an umbrella or two, maybe three. If the wind is blowing, you also need one of those collapsible sun screens. Then you need beach towels, coolers, maybe a folding picnic table or perhaps just beach chairs. Certainly you need a football (soccer ball to those of you in the US) and a kite plus sand buckets and shovels for the little ones. Maybe an inflatable water toy or a boogie board (or whatever they call them in France.) I truly don't know how they get all the gear and the family too in those little cars. Watching some of the groups get out of their cars reminded me of all those circus clowns that used to get out of a Volkswagen when I was a kid.
As if traffic wasn't bad enough on the roundabout by the bridge that leads to Le Touquet from Etaples, on Saturday there was a market. Total gridlock, but we scored a parking place just a block away from the market where I managed to find some light weight tops. Clothes that I can wear in Arizona in the summer time just don't make it here in the high humidity and the lady from Paris has been warning us how hot it will be in the city for our visit. Almost as if she were warning us not to go.....
posted by Al and Linda @ 6:14 AM
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