After one night at the hotel in Carcassonne, we packed up and headed west to the Atlantic Ocean. It was a long 4 hour drive to our first stop at the Dune du Pilat. Dune du Pilat is the largest sand dune in Europe located in the Arcachon Bay 60 km from Bordeaux. It is 500 m wide and 2.7 km long running north to south. On the east side of the dune is a grove of trees and when you reach the top of the dune you are treated to a spectacular view of the Atlantic Ocean.
See map. Find Bordeaux in the middle of map and the Arcachon Bay is just south west.
The kids had a lot of fun climbing up the dune, some chose to climb the stairs but most trudged through the hot sand like they were in the Sahara desert. After making the trek up to the dune we headed back down for some lunch.
From Dune du Pilat we headed east 60 km to the beautiful city of Bordeaux. Here we had an architectural walking tour. Relative to the medieval ruins we have been seeing, Bordeaux is a rather young city developed in the 18th century. While Bordeaux is steeped in history from the first century, the golden era of Bordeaux began in the 18th century with roughly 5,000 buildings constructed in this era. Architecture is quite different from the Roman ruins and medieval castles.
Tomorrow we continue up north to the Loire area.
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