Friday 20 June 2014

A Weekend in France // TRAVEL

A Weekend In France - 14/15th June 2014
So over the past weekend my parents and I tumbled into our car at 5am and drove down to Kent where we would take the Eurotunnel, and it was here our adventure started!  

After an uncomfortable sleep in the back of the car and a short drive once we had arrived in Calais, we reached our home for the weekend - Le Touquet! Now you can go to markets all over the world, but France really knows how to do a market, although it's quite common to see spare parts for dolls and barbies in boxes, which is just a little bit terrifying. Saturday is market day in Le Touquet, so after having scones and lattes for breakfast (yes I did have scones have breakfast and yes it's as good as it sounds) we wandered over to the market. You could buy pretty much anything there - shoes, fruit, books, antiques, home ware, fish and that's just a little selection of the stuff on offer! My favourite purchase at the market was the radishes we bought; not because I really love radishes or anything, but because we bought them off a French farmer who had real life green fingers! And he looked really pleased that we'd chosen him to get our radishes from - bless! 

After lunch and a little browse around the few shops Le Touquet has to offer, we headed back to our hotel. Now the hotel we always stay at when we're there is right on the beach. Like when you step out of the door you're on the beach, pretty great right? However that does mean that rooms with a sea view are a little pricey! So we'd settled for a room with a view of the sand dunes (which is just a nicer way of them saying that your view will be of the car park and if you really stretch your head out the window you can catch a glimpse of the sand dunes). But to our surprise we had been upgraded to a room with a sea view, woooo! Also they'd left a bottle of Le Touquet brewed beer and biscuits in the room, extra woooo! 

We had our dinner in the best fish restaurant I've ever been to, the food there is amazing! And then we finished off the day in the hotel bar, where we were joined by the most beautiful sunset. It was all oranges and reds and pinks and the reflections of it on the sea were breathtaking. I could have taken thousands of photos, but due to the fear that it looked like I was taking photos of the couple sitting outside, I didn't... hahaha.


Now hotel breakfasts are one of my favourite things ever. There's just so much amazing food to choose from, and also an endless supply of coffee and orange juice which is great. And as I said, this hotel is right on the beach, so I enjoyed my platefuls of pastries and scrambled egg and bowls of cereal with a lovely morning view of the beach... Perfect!

Sunday’s in France are very relaxed, most shops close or are only open until midday, but when you’re right by the beach, shopping isn’t really on the top of my list of things to do. Therefore, we walked along the beach instead. The beach at Le Touquet stretches for miles, so even though I’ve been here loads of times, there were still parts of the beach unexplored. So we walked along those parts, discovering a lovely little cafĂ© that was placed right on the sand and loads of little beach huts that were all brightly coloured and adorable. After some cold drinks we emptied the sand out of our shoes and headed into the main part of town. We took a quick look around some of the shops before they closed their doors for the day and then settled into the local Irish pub for a coffee. 

So cute.
People watching in the Irish pub.
Before leaving the beautiful beach and starting our journey home we got lunch in the hotel bar. A club sandwich and chips for me, accompanied with a pineapple flavoured mocktail, yummmm! And then it was just about time to go home.

The mocktails, delicious!

It was a short but sweet trip, and I can’t wait to have more Le Touquet adventures!