And so the journey begins....

I headed back to St Girons where my cousins live with the intention of only staying a couple of days to say hello. When I arrived they asked if I was going to stay till a cousin of mine from Australia arrived. So that was at the end of the week and then they asked if I could stay till their daughter comes on the weekend after. So all in all I spent 2 weeks of sunning it up at the beach, relaxing, eating and drinking as the french do. While I was there it was Bastille Day. We headed to the local town Leon. Where they have a wooden bull with fire works jammed in it. Well I didn't know that they were going to set this thing off in the middle of the crowd. But they did. And pretty much everyone got rained on with hot embers from the fireworks. Completely insane! The next monday they had a show called Torro Piscine, bull pool. Basically they get a whole bunch of guys in an arena playing games like sack races, football, etc but they let out a bull or two with them. So sort of running with the bulls but with a greater chance of getting nailed by a bull. Very funny night. They even get the kids in there to run with a calf. And then at the end of the night they have donkey races. Sounds easy, ride a donkey 3 times around the pool, Try riding a bucking donkey around. Well i found out how hard that was, I blame the decission on one too many appertivs (pre-dinner drinks) for the choice, but before I knew it I was climbing over the fence to give it a crack. And that was the sound by head made as it hit the ground. Good thing I am not a rodeo rider as I would be broke. I sucked at. After 2 weeks in St Girons, I headed to Paris where I was pretty sure I wouldn't find any crazy donkeys to ride. I spent 6 days in all in Paris. The place is great but 6 days was enough. I saw heaps and enjoyed it all. High lights for me were the Arch de Triophe and St Sulpice cathedral, the da vinci code tour of the Louvre is well worth the €10. I had contemplated going to St Mont Michels and the D-Day beaches but after finding out it would cost me €70 to get to St Mont Michel, it put me off. It had cost me €75 to get from Dax in the south of France to Paris, so I couldn't work out how it was going to cost me €70 to get there. As I found a day or two later it was going to cost €75 to get to Brussles in Belgium. To me it looks like it france has a one price fits all policy Next stop for me is Belgium the land of chocolate and beer!

Arrived in France late at night in a city called Grenoble. This was just a rest stop to continue onto Carcassonne. Here we stayed for 3 days. The old part of town "La Cite" was beautiful, with a lovely old castle. Even though it was a bit over run with tourists and tourist shops it was still worth see and spending time in one place. From Carcassonne we headed to our final destination in this mad dash across Europe, St Girons. It is on the South West coast of France near a town called Dax. St Girons is just a small little place, but just fantastic for chilling out. We arrived a the right time of year, it wasn´t yet overrun with Summer holiday makers. We spent a week here, which included Easter. We drove along the coast to a town called Bairritz. In the Summer months the place is packed no room to sit on the beach. On Easter Saturday we headed to the local market in St Girons. This will give you some idea of how small this place it. The market consisted on 5 stalls, yep that is all. One selling Fruit and Vege, one selling roast chicken and Paella, one selling local cheeses, one selling local wine and the other was just selling strawberries. While we were there our cousins wouldn´t let us go till we had a feed of snails and frog´s legs. It was all very tasty. But I still feel sorry for the frogs that now only one pair of legs.

We enjoyed our time there, it was very relaxing.

From St Girons, we had to make our way to Germany for my Father´s big 6-0. Back to where he was born. We headed to France and then travelled onto Strasboug, just on the border of Germany.

Next stop Offenburg, Germany.