Arcachon.

We've been looking to do a local day trip for a while now. Today was the first of many! Nat, Candice, Lucy and I chose to go to Arcachon, it's on the coast and has Europe's largest sand dune! The weather was supposed to be sunny, unfortunately, it was quite the opposite.
We caught a 9:05am train there and it took about 40 mins. Once there, we just went to the tourist office with the hope of hiring bikes. We quickly realised it was probably too cold to ride around today, so we'll go back and do that in summer! The local markets were on, so we went and browsed those for a while, and then grabbed hot chocolate in a cafe to escape the cold (it was one of the coldest days we've had here so far, despite it gradually becoming warmer). After, we went back to catch the bus to the dune and found out we'd been looking at the wrong timetable and it actually left in an hour and a half haha. So we went back to another café/restaurant and grabbed lunch. I had my first croque monsieur - it was absolutely delish!

Luce and I on the train

At the markets

Lucy and Candice

Nat and I

Fire truck

So many olives

Fresh fruit and vege

More

Flowers!

Vacuum sealed snails

Spaghetti snails!

The pier - Arcachon

Me!

The beach

Nat, Lucy, Candice and I - with an intruder

The town building

Fountain

Hot chocolate and hand warming

The 25-30 minute bus ride out there was pretty cool, it looks like a pretty expensive area to live in. The houses were so nice!
When we reached the dune, it was absolutely massive!! Climbing it was so hard - the sand was like fresh snow. It was so soft and your foot literally sank straight into it, so making progress in actually getting up the hill took ages (such a good leg workout). It was completely worth it though. The top had such a good view! On one side was like dense forest and the other was blue ocean. It probably would have been bluer if there weren't clouds in the sky, but it was still pretty!

The Great Dune of Pyla shopping centre!

On out way

The descent - more on the other side

Me!

Starting our descent

Me, Lucy, Candice and Nat

Almost there

So close

YEAH! Made it!

The view

Luce, Candice and I

Jumping haha

Nat, I, Lucy and Candice

Going home

The climb back down was even funner! You could just bound down with your feet getting stuck in every step. Haha my shoes were full of sand at the bottom! I've never seen so much sand come out of shoes before.
We then took the bus back to the main town and caught the train home. Such a good day!