Southwest France: Day 1

    We started out the day with a nice hotel breakfast: baguette and jam! Then we caught the TGV ( a speedy train) to St. Jean de Luz. St. Jean de Luz is a nice holiday city right by the ocean:

    Because the train ride was 5 hours we were given the rest of the day to explore! The group of people I was with immediately headed for the beach!

   ...it was so beautiful! After all of the rain in England it was so nice to be in the sun! That's not to say that I don't enjoy rain, because I really do--it was just nice to have it feel like summer.
    Being on a European beach, we were instantly reminded of the differences between American and European culture. People were just so free with the way they expressed themselves i.e. they didn't have much on as far as clothing goes. It was fascinating to see the difference, the common attitude seemed to be: this is me. I feel like the common feeling on American beaches is: I am allowed to wear something skimpy because I look like an Abercrombie model. At least that seems to be the attitude at my city's local pool. So although there were definitely bits of people I'n not very interested in seeing again, it was almost beautiful--people accepted that they way they looked was...the way they looked, and that was it. That's the feeling I got anyway. It's the same sort of thing with a lot of classical art, it isn't explicit feeling because there's nothing sensual about it--it's just the human form--a celebration of living. So there's my thoughts about that...I probably wont be trying that out anytime soon myself, but it sounds liberating.
     After a nice walk along the beach we found some dinner at an over-priced cafe. I got a tuna salad sort of thing and then we did some night-alley-way exploring and turned in.