We decided to take a bus today because we are continually behind ourselves as usual. The bus stop was literally just on a corner a few blocks from our albergue. There was only one bus a day and it left at 10:48 and the cost was 7.50 Euros for just over 50 kilometers. The regular bus is much more expensive than travelling by the baggage pack people (although still quite reasonable).
We arrived in Aire-sur-L'Adour - population just over 6,000 in about an hour and sat in a funky cafe with tea, nursing our colds, to try to determine where we wanted to stay. We had seen a sign in our last
gîte which recommended a certain hotel so we looked for and found the Hotel de la Paix which turned out to be fairly close to where we were and had rooms with breakfast for 13 Euros. We thought we would be better off if we kept our colds to ourselves and no doubt others would appreciate it as well. As it turned out the owner was run off her feet when we arrived and as cranky as could be so taking that into consideration and then looking at rooms and hallways that were definitely on tilt we wondered what we had gotten ourselves into! The whole hotel had definitely seen better days although it had a more recent addition of a shower in the corner of the bedroom- without curtains or any other kind of privacy it was just there - very handy for sure but somewhat strange. The toilet though, was down the hall and a half floor lower or higher - take your choice!
It was one of those days. Since we both felt so lousy everything seemed to have a bit of a grey cloud hanging over it. We wandered around and looked for a place to have lunch and ended up at a bistro that had only their menu of the day. They had run out of the usual meal, however, and offered to feed us rabbit but we declined. In the end they gave us some really nasty deep fried old pork roast. None of this helped how we felt and no doubt our colds made everything seem much worse and we expected to have a terrible night's sleep by this time.
We went to bed early expecting the worst but ended up having an excellent sleep and to our surprise both of us felt MUCH better in the morning. The breakfast was tasty and the owner was friendly and interesting in the morning. We had noticed that most of the pictures on the walls were to do with a yearly animation and graphic design competition and exposition in Aire that seemed to attract people from quite a distance. As it turned out the owner herself was a keen graphic designer and was instrumental in helping set up the exposition. There was clearly some good talent taking part.
We had ended up the night before buying some lunch things before the stores closed so we left Aire-sur-l'Adour in a good mood and feeling relatively healthy again. Just as well as it was a long hike uphill to get out of town!
We went to bed early expecting the worst but ended up having an excellent sleep and to our surprise both of us felt MUCH better in the morning. The breakfast was tasty and the owner was friendly and interesting in the morning. We had noticed that most of the pictures on the walls were to do with a yearly animation and graphic design competition and exposition in Aire that seemed to attract people from quite a distance. As it turned out the owner herself was a keen graphic designer and was instrumental in helping set up the exposition. There was clearly some good talent taking part.
We had ended up the night before buying some lunch things before the stores closed so we left Aire-sur-l'Adour in a good mood and feeling relatively healthy again. Just as well as it was a long hike uphill to get out of town!
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