Biarritz - Day Four

After a brief five hours on France´s superfast TGV (high speed train), I found myself in Biarritz. I´d made arrangements to stay with Paddy and Jess - good friends from Devon - and had managed to book a train that arrived about 10 minutes before Paddy finished work.

With timing this perfect it would surely be the work of a moment to either give him a call and get picked up from the station, or make my way across town and surprise him at his flat. I looked in my wallet for the piece of paper I´d written his address and phone number on and strolled to a payphone.

Two significant things soon became clear to me:

1. I´d left the piece of paper with all his contact details on it in an internet cafe in Paris
2. The payphones in France are the playthings of satan - they don´t accept coins, credit cards or the phonecard I´d picked up in Paris.

Bugger.

Still, this sort of thing is what makes travelling fun. I grabbed a street map from the station, got a taxi to an internet cafe, and then discovered that their house was only a couple of streets away. After 10 minutes of wandering about trying to read house numbers I found their block of flats at exactly the moment Paddy was wandering back from his car, a case of twenty beers in his hands. Panic over.



Had a really lovely evening staying in and catching up with Paddy and Jess, who treated me to some tasty quiche and a very strange Australian film from the 80´s, Hercules Returns. If you ever get the chance to see it I highly recommend it - one of the weirdest films I´ve ever seen.

The next day Paddy and Jess both went to work, and I was left to discover the town on Paddy´s pride and joy: a pimped out, blinged up bmx he got off eBay from some guy in Germany. Someone has literally made every available accessory on that thing gold and shiny. I was assured that as soon as I hit the streets I´d have a crowd of babes chasing after me, all wanting a piece of the shiny action, but in the event all I managed was a friendly "super" from a passing French granny.



Because my interRail ticket is only valid for a month, I only had time for one more night with the guys, but that didn´t matter as they were heading off to the mountains to go snowboarding with Paddy´s Quiksilver workmates anyway. We had a great pizza in a restaurant that was decorated like a pirate ship (if you know me at all you´ll know just how sweet it is to write those words), and then all too soon it was time to hit the road again. I´m starting to feel like the littlest hobo, and I´m not even a week in yet.