fete de Bayonne

We went to the Fete de Bayonne last sunday.We caught a train from St vincent de Tyrosse to avoid the traffic and lack of carparksfor this huge yearly fiesta.With everyone in traditional red and white, its an amazing sightin the beautifully historic city of Bayonne on the edge of two large rivers that run into one.Red wine,great food ,roving minstrels,thousnds of people ,this fiesta runs for 5 days

and attracts an enormous crowd with fun for all from heaps for the kids thru to bars every 20 metres.Very loud with lots of drums and trumpeters everywhere.I loved the makeshift urinals (as you can see in one of the photos) that are in the smaller laneways,hilarious stuff.

We met Corinnes family there about 11am and kicked right into things ,then wandered from bar to bar and onto an outdoor restaurant where we enjoyed some very good wine and some great food,very traditional with lots of foie gras and lots of duckand of course finished off with more red wine and some cheese.After that we did another bar crawl,watched some traditional dancing ,found another bar where some of the patrons picked up their guitars and sung some sensational basque songs,excellent stuff.Something that i do love about the french is that they really do guard their traditions ,and in such an old historic medieval city like Bayonne,a fiesta like that has an amazing feel ,its something that is impossible to find in Oz

Corinne ,Lola and i caught the 6 pm train back and left the rest of the family to continue their bar crawl.A very entertaining day for all.