Dune Du Pyla

We spent the evening in La Rochelle, a beautiful old port town. We arrived at around 7pm and wondered down to the town to find somewhere to dine. The town was full of activity and there were lovely streets full of restaurants and people. The French, as do many other European countries, eat quite late, and I was very surprised to find families with small children out dining at 10:30pm. All of the children I saw seemed very well behaved and happily enjoying the night out.



Mmmm... We had a lovely dinner that night. They say that the French do duck very well, and yes, I can confirm, that is correct.



After visiting La Rochelle, the next day we journey down to Arcachon. It's here that we visited the Dune Du Pyla. This is the largest sand dune in Europe! It sits on the coast and is moving inland at about 4-5m a year. It's apparently taken in a few buildings already. It's an amazing site and here are my parents on the ascent to the top.



This picture shows just how steep the side of the dune is. Very freaky stuff.



Here are my folks, Sue and Seng at the top of the Dune du Pyla. It's a great 360 view from the top with the ocean and land on either side.



Here is me on the dune. After hanging about at the top for a while the others decided to take the stairs back down, but I had to have a go at running down to the bottom. Sooo much fun!!!



Our next, and final stop before heading to Bergerac was St-Emilion. This is a really stunning little old town (it is on the UNESCO world heritage list) where we were greeted by mediaeval performances and plenty of tourists. Here is a photo of the mono-lithic church in the heart of the town. St-Emilion is also very well known for it's wine. Apparenlty the only wine growing region to be UNESCO listed!



Here is me overlooking the town. The cobbled strees were lovely but you wouldn't want to be wearing high heels in. Infact, I think the guide book advised not to where high heels even. We also witnessed a wedding taking place at the 'Hotel de Ville' there, very lavish, the kind of style that the French are known for I guess.