Change of Plans, YOLO

By now we were roughly three months into our trip. Two glorious months of beach life in Sri Lanka and the next month in mountainous Switzerland, city of Paris and one teaser week on the beach in Santorini. The water babies in us were craving long days of sun, surf and sand. Not to mention the itch to get those three kites we were lugging all around the world, back up in the air.

One of the best things about our travels so far, was meeting so many people from all over the world and learning of their unique travel experiences. So many of these people talked so fondly of Portugal and said how amazing it was. This made us question our decision to cut it out of our original itinerary and well, even though we cut it due to logistics and chose Greece instead, we like to have our cake and eat it too!

As we experienced a heatwave in Paris, we longed to be back near the water. The kids were happy at the beach and we were content to absorb culture whilst being oceanside. It was just more our jam. We were not able to add more days, so we chose to add a flight, skip a chunk of Spain and the French riviera and add in a couple of buses and some big travel days. The kids were about to start two weeks school holiday, getting back to the ocean was the right choice.

From Paris we made our way into Basque Region, an area renown for its culinary delights, good wine and surf beaches. It sounded right up our alley!

We arrived in Bordeaux by train from Paris late in the afternoon and we were leaving early the next morning. There was no time for visiting winery’s so did the next best thing and booked a tasting at the wine bar located in the headquarters of the Conseil Interprofessionnel des Vins de Bordeaux (Bordeaux Wine Council). 90% of the time we chose kid friendly restaurants where we could all chill out and play a game of uno while we waited for our dinner. This one however set in 19th century building and beautiful modern minimal interiors was going to be a stretch especially after a long travel day.

So we did what any parent would do who was desperate to try some of Bourdoux finest, we bribed them with their iPads and the promise of an ice cream if no blood was shed. We actually underestimated our little travellers because they sat and sipped their local grape juice, devoured our cheese plate and made meaningful conversation with a Canadian couple sitting next to us (on our beige leather bench seat).

Our last couple of days in France were spent in Biarritz. An elegant seaside town, famous for its surf break and glamour beach life. Sadly the weather was not in our favour (the only bad weather of our entire trip) and a surfboard broken while hustling onto the TGV meant Derek didn’t get a surf in.

Over the border into Spain we hit San Sebastián. Basically we stuffed ourselves silly for three days and had the most incredible food of our entire trip, if not of our lives. We had Pintos for almost every meal and I have never seen the kids eat so much as they did in these three days. We were all in food heaven. Amazingly the surf was up in the bay and Derek hired a longboard and got in some epic runs while overlooking the old-town, an unexpected highlight.

On a rainy day we hired a car and drove up to Pamplona through some epic mountain highway. We arrived the week after the bull run. It was fun seeing the setup and pretending to run with the kids. The old city is quite beautiful without the attraction of the bulls and is packed with specialty meat stores, parks and wine bars and was very walkable even with the kids.

We could have easily stayed in San Sebastián a little longer but with our mission to cross to Portugal, we left content and pumped for some epic travel days ahead.