This past weekend, I visited a sand dune, but not just any sand dune -- the tallest sand dune in Europe, La Dune du Pilat. It is located in La Teste-de-Buch in the Arcachon Bay area and it measures around 500m wide from east to west and 2.7 km in length from north to south. It is considered to be a foredune, meaning a dune that runs parallel to a shoreline, behind the high tide line of a beach. The dune has been observed to move landward, slowly pushing the forest back to cover houses, roads, and portions of the Atlantic Wall.
See the pictures below of this famous tourist destination:
This is the view of the dune when you climb up it. It is quite steep.
This is the view of the beach after you climb down the dune.
To get back to your car, you have to reclimb the dune and descend it again. This picture was taken on the second descent.
I went with a teacher who I work with at my school, and her family.
I also had a special French food this weekend: les escargots (snails). When I ordered the snails, I was delivered a full tray of them, a pair of tongs, and a snail fork. To eat them, I held the shells with the tongs and twisted the fork to separate the meat from the shell. The eating process was quite complicated, but despite that, I thought the snails weren't that bad because they were served in a creamy garlic butter sauce.
The snail platter
About to dig in! Eeeeeek!
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