Even The Tourist Office Was Open!
Surprisingly, the Tourist Office in Biarritz was fully open.
But I don’t think you could call Biarritz by any means. a sleepy town.
Hotel Du Palais, Biarritz
The Hotel Du Palais is a hotel steeped in history and luxury.
I would have stayed there if it hadn’t been closed for the winter.
After all, they did let Michael Portillo in.
Exploring Biarritz
Today, was the sixth anniversary of C’s death.
So I walked around the town contemplating what might have been.
What surprised me was how busy the town was, with cafes and shops fully open. It made Bilbao look like a morgue.
Biarritz’s Free Shuttle
Biarritz has a free shuttle bus, that operates around the town.
Biarritz’s Free Shuttle
This was the stop outside the hotel.
A Sensible Hotel In Biarritz
It was the third time in recent months, that I’d stayed in a Radisson Blu hotel.
It was practical and the bathroom was one where I could have a good bath, without fighting the designers ideas. Not sure on the tile design though!
i could also have taken my ironing, as I don’t have one at home.
I also got gluten-free bread with my meals.
Something, that I couldn’t photo was the television. A normal Samsung, but it had access to every channel possible. I watched the London flavour of BBC1, but all the other regions were available. So even Alex Salmond would have felt at home! If you’d been a Coronation Street fan, ITV was also available.
These days, with satellites and the Internet everywhere, surely a hotel can provide guests with every possible flavour, which has some degree of decency and taste. If I can get hundreds of channels in my house in Hackney for a few hundreds a year, I can’t see the problem.
Welcome To France
The French train from Hendaye may not have been one of their most modern, but everybody was pleasant and the train trundled along the coast to Biarritz, which was my final destination.
There wasn’t any good map at Biarritz station and as it was now dark, I felt I had better take a taxi.
The driver though, wasn’t the surly individual beloved of British comedians, when talking about France for years, but a clean cut individual, who spoke perfect English and charged me what it said on the meter.
So painlessly, I’d arrived at the Radisson Blu hotel.
From Irun To Hendaya
The girls should obviously be put in charge of tourism in Irun, as their instructions were spot on and I found Irun Colon station from where I was able to get a train for Hendaye.
The only member of staff I met was from a completely different mould to his countryman at Irun station, and he sold me a ticket in a pleasant and professional manner.
After a trip of a few minutes I was in France.
A Warm Welcome In Irun
Michael Portillo’s documentary on travelling by train from Bordeaux to Bilbao gave me the impression that finding your way from the French to Spanish railways systems is easy.
So I went into the station at Irun and asked if I could buy a ticket to France. I didn’t get an answer from the guy in the ticket office, but I heard him swear under his breath. Railwaymen the world over tend to be cherry souls, who are usually willing to help, but this oaf was by a long way the worst I had met. He made the staff at Osnabruck, when I was abandoned by Deutsche Bahn, seem to be some of the best customer service people, I’d ever encountered.
I then looked around for a helpful notice, that might say you took a taxi to the nearest French station and it would cost you so many euros. But there was nothing!
I had noticed taxis outside, but was reluctant to take one, as they would probably charge a British tourist a hundred euros to go a couple of kilometres.
In the end, I walked into the town and asaked a couple of teenage girls, if they could help a lost traveller. After all, I did hope that they had learned some English.
They had and told me to walk to the Metro station with the blue sign, from where I could get a train to Hendaya. I knew that I could get a train from Hendaye, as the French call it, to Biarritz.
Would I Go Back To Bilbao?
I don’t think so, as I found the city, one of the worst for tourists, of those I’d visited in recent years.
Except for the tourist offices and my hotel, it was a city with a total lack of information.
It just didn’t have the feel of a place that wanted tourists. In many places I’ve travelled over the last few years, the locals have been extremely helpful and offer help, even if you don’t ask for it. The only help I got in Bilbao, was from a lady of Far Eastern appearance, whilst I was struggling with the Barik ticketing machine.
If it hadn’t been for the excellent tram and Metro, the visit would have been a total nightmare. As it was I walked far more than I would have liked.
As it was, outside of my hotel, I only bought two coffees in the city. So I don’t think I did much for the local tourism industry!
The Guggenheim Museum was worth a look on the outside, but I’ve never seen an art gallery, that was filled with so much crap!
At least the weather was nice and I got a touch of winter sunshine.
And the transport links from and to the city, don’t seem to be the best.
As it is a city of around a million people, Bilbao probably deserves a lot better.
The Anonymous Widower 