Just along the coast from Hendaye is the pretty town of St Jean de Luz. We've been here several times before but it's still lovely to be back in the Basque country, plus I wanted my brother to see it.
There's a lovely beach here, but with such gloomy weather it's not surprising it was so empty! It seemed like most days of our holiday, the weather changed.
I remember this building from before as it's so unusual. I had to crop it like this as there were motorbikes all parked up messily but it's on the junction of two streets and is quite narrow at this end as it is a wedge shaped building. The side you can see is sea facing so I bet the apartments would be rather expensive!
There were many pedestrianised streets full of shops. I really enjoy having a browse through places like this, looking in the shop windows. We do buy some tourist stuff as well as I like getting an occasional fridge magnet or mug or something from our travels. Also Keith looks at hats and I look at handbags. 😀
A cookie shop!
Now do you understand why I love the Basque architecture? Most houses have these wooden decorations on the facades, most are this red colour but some are green, which with white are the colours of the Basque flag.
This colour is actually called Basque Red when it comes to paint.
Espelette
In the afternoon we went to Espelette, a village which is the centre of the Basque chilli growing region. Many houses are decorated with strings of the chillies, like this hotel in the centre of town.
You can see the chillies better on this building. Basque chillies are not very hot and are used as a table condiment in place of black pepper, as well as in cooking. Dried chilli powder is expensive and so are the seeds. When we were in Brittany I tried growing them but I had a failure - they never ripened and were not hot at all (so I ended up stuffing them like Jalapeno poppers which was yummy but time consuming). And one plant had completely different shaped chillies!
Whilst there we coincided with several coach loads of tourists. K and I spent a week here many years ago at a friend's holiday home, but it was October and wasn't too busy then, also I recall us having fantastic sunny weather, not like this gloom.
The church, Saint-Etienne, built in 1627.
We weren't here at the right time for a meal which was a shame, as all the restaurants in the little town serve Basque cuisine, which is quite nice. I did buy lots of gateau Basque from the supermarket though! It's delicious but not so easy to come across in other parts of France. They are either stuffed with a sweet creamy stuff or black cherry jam - another thing produced in this region and sold in all the tourist shops.
It rains a lot in this part of France and is lovely and green, and is also quite mild during winter. When we first came here I loved it so much I wanted to move here, but then I looked at the price of the properties (the ones with pretty facades) and had to forget that. They are very expensive! We did better where we eventually moved to - we still have Spain, the coast and the mountains nearby, plus not too cold winters, but much cheaper houses. 👍
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