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Posts Tagged ‘biarritz’
The best of Biarritz by night!
Read the second part of Natalie’s blog – How to live it up in Biarritz for less!
As my friend Allison and I had decided to save money by self-catering in our Biarritz apartment – making our own breakfasts and picnic lunches to take to the beach – we treated ourselves to dinners out.
I was keen to see just how much the French VAT cut would reduce the dinner bill for two girls who like to eat, drink and get a little bit merry. Aside from the final evening when we blew 80 Euro at a smart seafood restaurant with premium wine to wash it down, we rarely spent more than 35 Euro for a meal for two. That’s considerably cheaper than meals out in London!
For those not in the know, this July, the French slashed VAT on all restaurants and cafés in France from 19.6% to 5.5% to boost domestic – and of course, tourist spending. The tax cuts mean that a meal typically costing €15 (£13) has been reduced to around €13.20 (£11.40).
Even better, many establishments in Biarritz have re-printed their menus displayed at the front of their restaurants to feature the before and after VAT cut prices!
The handful of restaurants along the tourist hub of Grande Plage now serve main courses from around 15 Euros but there are plenty of other and equally charming restaurants in town where you can eat for less.
Here’s our pick of the best evening entertainment Biarritz has to offer…
Best Spa time
Enjoying a relaxing spa treatment in the early evening before you go out for drinks and dinner is a superb way to get your night off on the right note.
And when it comes to spas, Biarritz is awash with options, many of which specialise in traditional French style thalassotherapy (body wraps, hydro-massage, and scrubs that use seaweed and seawater based products for treatments).
For those on a carefree budget, the Spa Imperial at the Hotel du Palais is the town’s chicest haunt. We went to the more affordable but still very lovely Accor Sofitel Thalassa Miramar (nr Plage Miramar on rue Louison Bobet). Treatments cost from around 40 Euros.
Top tip: On your first day, book yourself in for an exfoliating and moisturising body scrub. This gets rid of dead skin cells and creates the base for a great tan – that will also last longer. Just don’t forget to slap on the sunscreen!
Best for an aperitif
A neat way to keep costs down, is to enjoy a glass or two of wine and nibbles in the comfort of your apartment before heading out on the town.
While we stuck to this lovely routine most nights, we couldn’t resist checking out some of Biarritz’s swankier watering holes – where for the price of one cocktail you get to rub shoulders with the in-crowd.
Our favourite was the bar at the modern design hotel, Biarritz Hotel Tonic (58 avenue Edouard VII) located near the casino. Here, you can enjoy great cocktails in super chic comfort – and people watching, olives and cashew nuts come free.
Best restaurant with a view
We ate our way through a great selection of Biarritz’s restaurants – moules frites and great seafood are staple fare wherever you go – but when it comes to the best catch of the day at bargain prices, Casa Juan Pedro really rocks.
One of three restaurants clustered in the small but very charming Porte de Pecheurs, Casa San Pedro has tables spread alongside the waterfront. Fresh fish is cooked on a big outdoor grill – and generous plates of local merle or dorade with rice and salad or grilled prawns cost just 13 Euro. The house wines served in carafes are also very good with very drinkable rose wine costing just 6 Euro for half a litre.
Best tapas in town
Biarritz’s proximity to Spain means that great tapas is also widely available. You’ll get sea views and the very best tapas at La Santa Maria (Esplanade Porte Vieux) in the old port, close to the Rocher de la Vierge.
Best bar for people watching
The hippest nightlife area – popular with students, surfer dudes and young locals – is along Rue Mazagran which is packed with bars and restaurants from the top end of town stretching down to the Place du Port Vieux.
The upmarket surfer and young hang out of choice is Caffe Ventillo, a lively DJ bar decked out in red and purple lip and throne shaped chairs and sofas with little tables spilling out onto the street terrace.
Draft beers are reasonably priced, it’s a great place to watch the evening parade of hipsters drift along the street, and it’s the meeting place for the surfing fraternity if you want to experience the scene.
Natalie Walsh stayed at the Pierre & Vacances Haguna residence in Biarritz.
If you’re looking for a late escape, Pierre & Vacances is offering seven nights in a studio apartment for two from just 480 Euros this September. For further information and details of all Pierre & Vacances apartments in Biarritz, visit www.pv-holidays.com.
P&V: How to live it up in Biarritz for less!
Few things are quite as thrilling as holidaying in a really chic resort for the price of a package to the Costas!
If you think that swanky French resorts like Biarritz are out of your price range, think again! Struggling to find playtime money in this miserable recession, my friend Allison and I share a terrible affliction – champagne tastes with a vin du plonk budget.
This summer we had a mission: to find a holiday destination with glam factor that we could do on a budget. We’re not talking shoe-string – we decided we wanted to eat well and perhaps indulge in a few spa treats but not splash money on an expensive hotel that we two sun worshippers would spend little time in anyway.
We wanted sun, gorgeous beaches, and a laid back vibe in an upmarket French resort free from loud and leery karaoke bars and English pubs. We wanted a great holiday for less, without feeling that we were scrimping or missing out.
Biarritz, the famous Basque seaside town on the Atlantic coast, came out as the top choice. But could we afford it? Self-catering seemed the obvious solution.
We surfed the net and found the P&V holidays’ Beat the Euro deal – offering self-catering apartments in France, including Biarritz, at 2008 Euro exchange rates – promising a saving of up to 45 per cent!
We picked a self-catering residence in the heart of the action that looked perfect for our needs – the P&V Biarritz Haguna. We booked a week in a self-catering apartment at the residence for a bargain price, bought cheap flights with Ryanair, packed our best bikinis and headed to the sun…
Our accommodation
The Biarritz Haguna scored full marks for all our requirements. It’s situated just a five-minute walk from Grand Plage, ten minutes from the shops and restaurants of the town centre and backs onto a street filled with delightful French food stores.
Although simply furnished, it was clean, well-appointed with a balcony overlooking the residence’s private gardens, and was plenty big enough for two friends to share.
Checking into the famous Hotel du Palais on Grand Plage would be great if you could afford it, but staying here we got a very comfortable base with great access to the best of Biarritz without a crippling hotel bill. Hurrah!
Fabulous food
The little street below the residence has a mouth-watering boulangerie, charcuterie, and fromagerie, plus a fabulous greengrocers, and a little supermarket that’s great for basics and everything else – including a superb selection of good French wines at low prices you’d never find in a local shop at home!
With shops selling fresh local produce this good, self-catering is a pleasure.
On our first day, we explored them all and stocked the fridge with delicious patisserie, fresh baguettes, cheeses and salads for breakfast and lunch, and rose wine, olives and nibbles for aperitif time. The plan was that we’d eat these meals at the apartment or pack a picnic for the beach and enjoy dinners out in the evenings.
The kitchenette in our apartment was well kitted out with crockery and cooking facilities. We worked out that even though we’d feasted well, we’d probably saved on average 20 Euro a day each by catering for ourselves instead of having breakfast and lunch in the cafes. Excellent!
The Best of Biarritz by Day
The vibe
Biarritz is an upmarket little gem that exudes boho chic without taking itself too seriously. This enduringly popular Belle Epoque seaside town attracts French celebs and scruffy young surf dudes in equal measure – and while you will see the locals parading in elegant beachwear, no-one wears diamonds to the beach a la St Tropez. The architecture is a glamorous mix of gabled Basque houses – Biarritz is just 15 minute’s drive from the Spanish border – and art deco hotels and villas.
The town itself is compact, and you can easily get everywhere on foot.
The beaches
It’s not just the locals who are well-groomed, the beaches are too! At the crack of dawn every day, the beaches are cleaned and combed as part of Biarritz’s impressive efforts to fight pollution.
If you’re a surf god or goddess this is the town for you. Biarritz has been famous for surfing and its vibrant surf culture since the 1960s, and it now hosts the annual European surfing championships.
All the beaches – La Grande Plage, Plage Miramar, Plage du Port Vieux, La Cote de Basques, Marbella, and La Milady – are gorgeous. Your choice depends on whether you want to swim, surf or body board as each beach regulates these activities according to the safety of the famously fierce tides that make surfing here so great.
La Grande Plage, the main beach lined with restaurants and cafes, has separate areas for bathers and surfers; Le Port Vieux is a small shady beach ideal for families; La Cote de Basques is the hot spot for surfers, and Miramar was our sandy paradise of choice.
Plage Miramar is accessed by foot, surfing is not allowed and body boarding is restricted, making it the perfect beach for people like us who just love to sunbathe and swim.
A break from the sun…
If you can tear yourself away from the beach, there are plenty of attractions to tempt into town…
Museums & Galleries
Biarritz has plenty of great museums for culture vultures and history lovers, including the History of Biarritz Museum (Rue Broquedis), Museum of Oriental Art (Rue Guy Petit).
Our two favourites were the Le Bellevue (Place Bellevue), a stunning modern gallery where we saw an exhibition of sculptures by Jacques Lipchitz…and on a less high brow note – The Chocolate Museum!
That Biarritz is such an important town for chocolate comes as a surprise to most visitors, and a tour of the Musee du Chocolat (Ave Beaurivage) is a real treat. Here, you get to see exhibits of antique choc making equipment, a short film about the history of chocolate production and buy presents to take home in the gift shop that’s stuffed with extraordinary chocolate treats.
Window shopping
As you’d expect of such a surftastic town, there are plenty of shops selling famous brand surf boards and the coolest beachwear to match. We were a lot more interested in designer wear of the less salty kind. Hermes, in particular. The brand famous for its signature silk scarves has a suitably sumptuous store here, as does Paris’s favourite department store, Galeries La Fayette. It costs nothing to look, and it’s reassuring to know that th
ese designer emporiums are at least here!
Find out more information about the P&V group’s Residence Haguna in Biarritz on PV-holidays.com. the website for P&V.
Next week read part two of Natalie’s blog – the best of Biarritz at night!
Pierre Vacances: Self catering and the city guide: Biarritz
As canny city break addicts are quickly discovering, the cheapest way to explore Europe’s finest cities is to check into a self-catering apartment.
Whether you’re escaping for a romantic weekend , or looking forward to a cultural tour , cooking up your own meals means you can easily cut down the cost of your trip.
Swapping an expensive hotel for a self-catering apartment doesn’t mean foregoing comfort or central locations. You’ll find a vast choice of clean, modern apartments in Paris to Rome, situated in the heart of the action.
And why not pack a glossy cookery book, forage in the markets for delicious local produce and whip up gourmet treats in the comfort and privacy of your own little home from home?
Each week, we’re featuring a city break destination with money-saving tips and the best self-catering apartment deals to ensure you get the most out of your hard-earned cash.
Biarritz on a budget
Dreaming of a city break destination with a beach? In a peachy part of France? On a budget? Forget snooty St Tropez and make your way to the infinitely cooler Biarritz for a heady mix of nightlife, beachcombing and, of course, surf culture – French style.
Situated on the Atlantic coast on the Bay of Biscay , this vibrant seaside town combines belle epoque grandeur with boho chic. While the beaches, elegant bars and smart hotels continue to seduce the rich and famous, this youthful town is now the European centre of upmarket surf action where barefoot and tousle- haired boys and girls rub shoulders with models and watersports-mad millionaires.
This surftastic playground is accessible to those on the most modest of budgets. Here’s how to get your place in the sun for less…
Getting to Biarritz
You can get to Biarritz by rail in under nine hours from the UK if you take the Eurostar train from London via Lille or Paris.
Or fly in with a low cost airline. Both easyJet and Ryanair fly to Biarritz with daily departures in high season. The Aéroport de Biarritz-Anglet-Bayonne is located just four kilometers from the city centre.
Beach life
Biarritz boasts some of the best beaches in Europe and has won multiple awards for cleanliness and top ocean front facilities.
Beachcombing is free! Explore the vast swathes of sandy beaches from Grande Plage to the Plage Miramar – the hubs for top people watching and sunbathing action. Picnic in the sheltered coves of little Plage du Port Vieux and watch the sun go down with a cold beer at the Rocher de la Vierge (Virgin’s Rock), which is floodlit at night.
The depths of the Bay of Biscay outside Biarritz form a “wave funnel”, enabling surfing here all year round. For a ringside view of surf action, head to the Cote de Basques beach, situated in town. It was this beach with its colossal breakers which spawned European surfing culture, and it now plays host to the annual Biarritz Surf Festival in July.
Grand Plage also has powerful waves breaking right in front of the town centre. This is where the Biarritz Surf Trophy is held in October every year.
The beaches of Ilbaritz – Marbella, Bora Bora and Edouard VII – are located south of the town centre, and Anglet, to the north of Biarrit, is where you’ll find the beaches of Les Sables d’Or, L’Ocean, La Madrague, Marinella and Les Corsaires. Good peaks break at all points between the jetties that separate these beaches.
If you fancy learning to surf and can’t persuade a salty local to show you the ropes, the École du Surf (102 rue Pierre de Chevigné, 05 59 23 15 31, Surftraining.com offers affordable one-hour lessons in addition to its celebrated week-long courses.
City tour of Biarritz
The town’s architecture is a visual feast. As you stroll around you’ll discover a blend of gabled Basque houses and art deco villas.
To get your bearings, take a walk from the Côte des Basques and follow the winding trail to Port-Vieux. Then cross the footbridge to the Virgin Rock, named after its statue of the Virgin Mary, and climb up to the Atalaye Plateau for panoramic views across the town and beaches and the old seamen’s huts on the Fishermen’s Harbour.
Museums in Biarritz
On rainy days, or if you simply crave a break from the sun, there are plenty of cultural havens to explore.
At the sweet smelling Musée du Chocolat (avenue Beau Rivage, 05 59 41 54 64) you’ll not only learn about the history of Basque cocoa production but get to sample a generous selection of the fruits of the bean.
If you’ve got little ones in tow, come and meet the sealife at The Musée de la Mer (esplanade du Rocher de la Vierge, 05 59 22 33 34, www.museedelamer.com). Time your visit for either 10.30 am or 5pm and you can watch the keepers feed the hungry resident turtles and seals.
Discover the city’s illustrious past at the Musée Historique de Biarritz (rue Broquedis). Housed in the former Anglican church, this little museum features a memorial to the fallen officers at the French Napoleonic wars.
Markets in Biarrtiz
Rub shoulders with the locals and fill you baskets with Basque delights at the bustling covered market, Les Halles. The market is open every morning and local ham, chorizo, breads and luscious fruits and vegetables are among the rich pickings.
Also buy a bottle or two of chilled wine or cider. Shop well in the market for fresh produce and the supermarkets for staples and you can create delicious breakfasts, picnic lunches and dinners at a fraction of the cost of dining out.
Eating Out
When you don’t feel like cooking and want a treat, tapas bars and cafes are the cheapest options but that doesn’t mean you’ll miss out. Sample Basque specialities such as piperade (ham and peppers), chipirons (baby squid), spicy meatballs and potatoes washed down with cider.
For a big treat, the fish restaurant Le Corsaire (00 33 5 59 24 63 72), situated at the Port des Pêcheurs ,is a local institution and guaranteed to impress.
Nightlife
Kick off the evening at the Café de la Grande Plage situated on the beach-level floor of the Casino, and you’ll get one of the best sunset views included in the price of the cocktails. The Old Port offers a wealth of buzzing watering holes and affordable tapas bars. The surfing fraternity convenes in the bars on rue Mazagran.
Local treats
Saunter around like a local in a pair of espadrilles – one of the traditional crafts that will actually come in handy for just a few Euros.
You may or may not be excited to learn the Basque town is also famed for its high quality table linen but everyone loves the chocolate. The region produces some especially delicious chocolate and there are plenty of chocolate shops crammed into the town. Patxaran (a liqueur made from aniseed, wild prunes and vanilla) is also a local must-try.
Accommodation in Biarritz
Pierre & Vacances has a selection of affordable self-catering apartments close to the top beaches, including Pierre Vacances Haguna Residence (17 avenue de la Reine Victoria), which offers a choice of self-catering studios and one-bedroom apartments.
All apartments offer a great base for visitors looking to soak up the city’s charms on a budget. Each apartment has its own fully-equipped kitchen, and comfortable living accommodation within easy reach of the beaches, cultural attractions and nightlife.
Hot offer
Apartments costs from just 290 Euro per week and short breaks (minimum two nights) are also available. For latest deals, visit www.pv-holidays.com
