Having arrived in Paris the day before on a TGV from La Rochelle, we’d spent the evening and morning exploring the city of lights a bit more before heading to Gare du Nord ready to start the final leg of our journey home. Just a few weeks before the Thalys brand disappeared, our journey from Paris to London St Pancras was with the original Eurostar onboard one of their newer class 374 e320 trains.
After an enjoyable couple of weeks in France, it was time to begin our journey home and so we once again found ourselves at La Rochelle’s main station ready to catch a TGV to Paris. La Rochell has a spectacular station, originally constructed in 1922, however it is now much too grand for the level of service offered, with at best a two-hourly service on routes serving the station.
This post is the second of two parts covering our stay in the Bassin d’Arcachon area and the things we got up whilst we were there. As the name of the area may suggest, the Bassin d’Arcachon’s main town is Arcachon which sits at the south-west corner of the bay, on the eastern side of the inlet where the bay meets the Atlantic.
Having caught the TER into Bordeaux Saint-Jean, we headed outside the station to catch one of the city’s trams. With four lines spanning the city, Bordeaux’s tram network is a great way to get around and a TBM day ticket can be purchased for €5. These tickets cover unlimited use of the trams, as well as the city’s buses and water buses and so really are a bargain.
Having had a few days to settle into our holiday accommodation and explore some of the local area, we had decided to spend a day visiting Bordeaux, the closest major city to where we were staying. Having had a nightmare drive around the city’s ring road on our way down from Bordeaux, we had chosen to travel into Bordeaux by train and so just after 0800 we were at the station waiting for the TER.
Having made our way from London to La Rochelle via Paris, we had collected our hire car and driven a couple of hours south to Le Bassin d’Archachon (or Arcachon Bay) which is around 45-minutes from Bordeaux. With a base in the village of Le Teich for just over a week, we were well placed to explore the local towns as well as the wider region.
