The familiar elements were all there…
The surf shops were selling t-shirts, swimsuits, and surfboards with names that I knew — Rip Curl, Billabong, Cocoa Beach — and the stack of blow-up flotation rings waited for the wee folks to waft about on the waves.
The red flag was flying on the beach to warn of the unstable swimming conditions and young families were riding their bikes in formation.
But wait a minute — where were we??? Did that pink neon sign say La Croquandise??? And what does gaufres mean??? I found out later that it meant waffles! And being very European, we could have put some glacé (ice cream) on those waffles. Yum!
We weren’t in a seaside town on the Atlantic Ocean in Florida no matter how familiar it all seemed. We were in a seaside town on the Atlantic Ocean in France — in Mimizan to be specific. The colour palette was more gray than blue since it was coldish and overcast on and off for our two days — definitely jeans and a fleece jacket time instead of shorts.
The architecture was even similar to Florida’s beachside communities — high-rise apartments hugging the intercoastal canals and generic concrete-rendered houses with red tile roofs. We found a basic and rather old-fashioned hotel a mere one block from the roaring ocean which we could hear through our sliding glass balcony doors.
And speaking of the roaring ocean, our walks down there were rather brief because it was quite cold and windy!
Come back soon for more adventures as we wander and work our way around Europe!
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