The Atlantic Ocean and the Sand Dunes

Today we headed to the West Coast... the Atlantic Ocean.  Finally!!  The kids have been talking about this for awhile so they were excited.

Traffic was horrendous... like, really horrible... bumper to bumper traffic all the way to the coast.  We were warned by many people to "go early!" We didn't listen.  In typical Talstra style it took us awhile to get out the door, so by the time we were in the car, it was 9:45 a.m.  I couldn't believe the traffic.  Honestly, is all of Europe trying to get to the beach today?

By mistake, we drove right through the seaside town of Archachon, which was incredibly busy but it actually looked like a really cool town,.  Very beachy and completely different than what we have seen in France so far.  But we crawled our way out of the town and headed South.  We eventually stopped on the main road in a random spot because we saw a grocery store/boulangerie and we needed lunch fixin's. And we found a parking spot right on the road which was a bonus.  Since we were already parked and out of the car, we decided to walk down to see what the beach looked like from there....

Amazing!!  I think we lucked out with finding a nice, quiet spot that wasn't touristy, but was just a big sandy beach.  So we stayed for a couple of hours and enjoyed the Atlantic Ocean... first time!!  It was beautiful, and so nice to just sit and relax for awhile.  It was overly hot which was great.

From there we headed towards the Dune du Pilat... the biggest dunes in Europe.  Again, crazy busy, cars parked everywhere/anywhere... we didn't even really know where we were at this point, but we found a place to park on the road. And there were the dunes... right there!  Score!  The Talstra's are having some good luck today. ;-)

Simon has been waiting for the dunes since we got to Bordeaux!!

Running down the dune... hard to tell, but it's pretty steep

These dunes were amazing.  They did not disappoint.  The view of the ocean and the forest behind, was was really worth the effort.  Beautiful!  Even though there were millions of people there too, it didn't matter.  It was awesome.

Decided to take a different route home, which ended up taking us 2 hours, but I think it was probably more pleasant, less busy than going back in the same direction we came from.  We were worried we would get stuck in bumper to bumper traffic again.  This route took us past a really nice, huge lake which was also very popular and there were tons of kit surfers and boaters.

Ah... home sweet home.  It's been another long day.   Kids showered and went straight to bed.