Biarritz

So I was going to wait to post this until I got a good wave picture from Glennis, but she's taking too long. I should also definitely be studying for my final exam in Gene to Protein, but I just don't have the willpower right now. Paris is gorgeous right now and I'm kind of sad I have to leave in a little over two weeks. But anyways, Biarritz. So as soon as we got back from Greece, Glennis and I had to get our things together for a train to Biarritz the next morning. Biarritz is in the southwest of France, really close to the border with Spain. It has the nicest beaches I have ever seen. Huge waves and always sunny, at least while we were there. Here's a picture:

We got probably the best room in the entire budget hotel, except that my bed broke whenever I sat on it. Clearly I've put on a little weightt during my stay in France. I ended up just putting my mattress on the floor most of the time. Besides hanging out at the beach, we also went to a casino. So my first gambling experience in a casino happened in French. It was pretty cool, and I had Glennis and Alexa there to stop me from losing all my money. I ended up turning 25 euros into 70 euros and then losing it all. After a quick consultation with my advisors, I decided to put another 20 euros in to win back what I had lost. In the end, I was up 7.50 euros in 2 hours of Blackjack. Very sad, but at least I didn't lose anything. In any case, Biarritz was awesome and my only regret was that we didn't get the chance to visit the chocolate museum there. There were definitely some interesting sites, though:

So we found this square with trees full of umbrellas. No idea why.

We also found a pool inhabited by vacuum cleaner flamingos. Again, no idea why.
Unfortunately we made a huge mistake and expected that we could pick up our tickets from the ticket office an hour before our night train back to Paris. Glennis really couldn't handle it, so I took a picture of her shame:

We ended up having to buy new tickets on the train, but we did manage to get the "couchettes", which are compartments with beds. So I actually ended up sleeping pretty well. When we got back to Paris, it was time to study for a paper on the Virgin and Child of the St-Chapelle, a really cool ivory sculpture. Not too much has gone on this week, things are wrapping up. And as I said before, Paris is gorgeous. Once I'm done with the exam tomorrow, I'll probably finally check out a museum again: either the Musée de l'Orangerie (lots of Impressionist works) or back to the Musée Rodin, to which the Camille Claudel collection has temporarily returned. We've got a mystery trip to Nancy and Metz this Saturday, so I'll be posting on that soon enough. Good luck on finals!