Hello again.... FYI---the Euro-rail booklet the company gives you when purchasing the tickets is not valid! The train we wanted to take this morning, here in Paris, was suppose to be either 8:55, 9:55, or 10:55 AM. After arriving here at 6am from yesterday's day trip we wanted to take the earliest possible so we could get to Amsterdam at a decent time. The clerk continued to tell us that it was "not possible" to take an earlier train than 2:25 PM. That leaves us here with about another 6 hrs to kill in a train station, whoohoo. I'm typing this in "word" and then going to transfer it over when we arrive in our Amsterdam hotel, hopefully we should be all settled in there by the time you read this. Saturday we woke up around 9 in Paris, trying to sleep in, and at the same time not wanting to miss our free breakfast. We downed that pretty fast, packed and organized our belongings, before heading on our first train trip, a night train none the less. We had to change things around in our packs a little because we only wanted to take our small backpack to Biarritz for the day. Lugging around these huge packs is not fun! After we checked out, we hopped on the metro to the train station, Grand de Nord, where we are right now. This is the train station that the Amsterdam train leaves from. We decided we would check our luggage here and then metro on over to the other train station, the one that would be taking us to the beach town on the west coast of France. We wanted to make sure everything was OK and we had reservations before we did anything else during the day. The train to the coast was a night train that did not leave till about a quarter till 11. Well we checked our luggage, and after about 45 minutes of trying to figure out what ticket counter to go to, we finally reserved our seats to head to the beach. We were also able to reserve the return trip so that helped a lot! That brings us to about 2 o'clock. Right outside the train station was a really nice supermarket/clothes/everything kind of store. We grabbed lunch there: baguette, turkey, cheese, a couple peaches and some juice for about 8 euro. We tried to sit outside on the grass where everyone else was sitting but I guess our food was mesmeric. Not only did it attract the birds but also the bums, yuck! They wouldn't leave us alone, even after we switched spots a couple times. We got over that pretty fast and came back inside the station still trying to decide what to do to kill 7 hrs./ The other cities that we were interested in: Nice, Versailles, were not in our "zone" for the metro so we had to keep it in the central Paris area. Since it was such a nice day out we decided to just go back to the Eiffel Tower and lay out our blanket there and relax. That is basically all we did, laid down and people watched! We arrived back at train station around 8 and wasted time till our 1045 PM train. The train was not a sleeper, which was fine. We had just normal seats that were pretty comfortable. The only bad thing about the trip was that we were right by one of the doors going in between cars. Every time we stopped along the way people were going in and out of it. There was also a group of about 4 crazy hippies trying to steal a ride to the next town sitting in between the train cars. In the morning we arrived in Biarritz at 6AM. Super early! The town was certainly not awake yet! The story behind why we chose this place: on our flight over from Dublin the sky magazine had a list of Europe's best beaches. They listed Biarritz as one of them and how big of a surf city it is including competitions in July, etc. As soon as we saw that, we knew we had to go so we changed our plans from Barcelona to the best surf in France. After we walked out of the train station we found a map of the city on a bus stop and just started walking to what where we figured the ocean would be in relation to where we were on the map. We found the beach right away, well not right away, about 30-40 minutes of a walk. The beach we went to first was completely empty, except for those few hippies or bums sleeping on the sand. The water and cliffs were gorgeous, and not too shabby of waves either! We parked ourselves on the beach waiting for the sun to rise so we could walk through the rest of town. That didn't last long because I didn't feel comfortable as homeless looked at us from afar wondering if we were "their kind" or rich travelers. We figured we did not want to wait around long enough for them to figure it out and started walking north ( or maybe south, we have no idea) on the beach/roads. As we were walking up, we started to see signs for the ROXY JAM all girls pro surf competition. We couldn't believe we had actually found what they were writing about the in the magazine article! Following the signs, we finally came across the festival and it looked like, the local surf spot. The waves were overhead and nice!!! A lot different than Ireland waves! We walked down to the wall (sidewalks and roads high, high, high above the ocean) and watched the other surfers out there till about 10. That is when Billy was able to hunt down a board rental and go out for a couple hours to experience the France waves. He had a blast, the board was not really to his liking but he still had fun on those fierce waves. We watched the surf competition for a while longer, walked down to a different beach and napped for an hour or 2, and then headed back up to the part of town where the train station was. Near the train station was a pizza place/internet so we checked our mail and chowed down on some really good pizza. Overall we had a really great time in this little town and glad we stumbled upon it in that magazine! Now we know of some awesome international surf to visit in the later future. Oh and one cool snack we had was a hot dog again but this one was unique! The restaurant had warm spikes that they split a baguette in half and stabbed it on, then they continued to put a while hotdog inside the hole in the baguette and squirt your choice of condiments inside! So good, we are defiantly going to bring that recipe back to the US. Sadly we were not able to watch the big game, no bars were open. We did not know if that was because it was a Sunday or they all go somewhere else to watch the game. Later the night our train back to Paris finally came around 11 and spit us out here this morning at 6AM. Billy is asleep next to me, hat down over his eyes and a sarong as a blanket, oh man, what a site! I should a take a picture! We are sitting on our backpacks for extra cushion and I guess as security as well. Well we will be in Amsterdam till Wednesday and then training on over to Munich. Keep in touch! Love you and miss you all! P.S.- In this train station we met a group of about 5 college students from Tennessee. They had planned on going to Milan the day we were going to Amsterdam, but their trains were full too. They ended up having to book for the next day and find somewhere to sleep for the night. They were planning on storing their luggage and sleeping in front of the Eiffel Tower, HAHA! They were really nice and we talked for a while about our travels. These are the kind of people and memories we will remember the most!