There’s something about breakfast in the garden, in the sun that puts you in mind of the tranquil. From the birds that skitter about around your feet looking for escaping crumbs from a croissant to the pollarded planes rhythmically placed around this small garden in the middle of Biarritz.
They’re lucky to have this space. the rest of the buildings seem hemmed in or built up but built up in a small way from where I’m sitting and although the leaves of the planes give some camouflage I can still see out to the flats opposite and look to the lighthouse painted and the wall to the left, a piece of realism in amongst a picassoesque assemblage.
The man on the top floor is animated on his phone whilst two floors down and to the right the woman, also on her mobile lolls on the balcony staring out to the sea. On a balcony to the left another woman folds towels hanging them on the back of a chair in the sun. Another man with a small boy running in and out off the flat drops his cigarette from the balcony and in this light I can see the white wrapping falling until my eye is taken by the white butterflies in the bushes in front of me.
Being in a garden for breakfast is special in any case. For us it reminds us both of our garden and perhaps even more of our honeymoon in Nimes, flat peaches, coffee and the darkness of a welcoming bedroom behind you.
We arrived here yesterday afternoon to the sun and the sea the narrow streets and only one navigational argument. We got the parking wrong but after a second circuit of the narrow streets and another view of the sea the car found itself ‘relieved of duty’ at the back of the gardens. I can see it now basking in the sun.
Standard room number three is on the ground floor and is cosy, the hum of the air-con doesn’t need long to get you to cool.
Hitting the streets of what feels like a small seaside town much frequented by the royalty of the past was a pleasure, not just because we’d been driving for a good few hours to get here but because the town is genuinely lovely. There are people, lots.There are motorbikes, excellent. There is sun and sea and faded glory of architectural greatness and not, but they’re all washed over by time and the sea air.
Being so close to Spain in the lee of the Pyrenees we found ourselves an uncomfortable perch at a tapas bar near the hotel. We elected to go inside and not be on the main street and I think we were right, as the evening gathered so did the crowds swelling like the sea and flooding into the streets to enjoy the food and the wine. The bar was getting busy and some of the staff were new but the food and the wine were great. The whole thing could only be improved by a visit to the ice cream parlour on a nearby street – excellent.
And then to bed.
And then to morning and breakfast in the garden with the birds and butterflies and the strangely betrunked poplars with there humps and hollows that appear to leer at you like dwarfen kings frozen in time.
Ruby&Ruch 