May 29,2011 Sunday
Took the tramway to the Gare St Jean and got a rental car from Avis. Started our drive out to the Arcachon peninsula area. It was fête de mères day in France (Mother's Day) and it was a nice day out so the traffic was pretty thick at times. Arrived in the town around noon-ish, found a parking space and walked to the beach area. There were probably 15 restaurants in view of the water and they were piled high with people and their moms. So we kept walking and eventually gave up on the idea of eating on the beach and picked, instead a café off the beach where we had some good oysters, moules marinières and a salad.

So we had our fill of Arachon and moved on to go to the Pointe de Grave to see what it and the famous lighthouse looked like. It was going to be a quick trip, though, as we only had the one day to do it. We drove for 3+ hours in the trusty Peugeot 207 through very hot 30C weather and finally made it up to the Pointe, which is at the mouth of the Gironde by 8pm. It turned out the view was nice, but not amazing. What was neat was to see the memorial the French had built to General Pershing's Army who helped save the French in WW1. It was even more impressive because the Germans blew up the memorial in WWII and the French rebuilt it. We didn't hang out here for very long since it was already 830pm.

Next we headed south for Bordeaux through the famous Medoc wine country. There is a 12-mile scenic wine route that takes you by all the famous wine chateaux which are really just castles, some modern and some not so much. But what they are is impressive and our friend Yves said (in answer to my question) that the really fancy places you can't even go to taste. Luckily there was no temptation to taste because they were all closed anyway since it was Sunday night at 9pm on Mother's day anyway and everything in the rural areas was closed. Not a single place, with the exception of McDonalds, was open. I should mention too that we saw an Aldi's food store along the French coast also which a surprise since we didn't know Aldi's was in France.

We finally arrived back at the hotel in Bordeaux and went out to grab a quick bite to eat at the Quick burger place which happily was open. It stays light here until about 1030PM so everyone stays out and enjoys the day to its fullest. We took a short walk around the warm (27C) evening since this was our last evening in Bordeaux for now.