La Brise Marine

Last year in French Lit, my friend Michelle and I presented on the poem by the French poet Malarmé, entitled "La Brise Marine" (Sea Breeze). Today, I got to experience a bit of a sea breeze myself!
I have been thinking all afternoon about how to describe my day. To put it plainly, it was wonderful!
I began my day with a morning run, along with a friend from the United States. We ran at the "Hippodrome", which is this giant stadium/park with a pretty huge track on the inside. The inside track is where they hold horse races, but they also have soccer fields and maybe a baseball diamond. It is a wonderful chunk of green space not too far from my lodging, so it makes me pretty happy.
At 7:30 in the morning, it is pretty chilly! There was even some leftover mist hovering over the field. It was beautiful!
After my run, breakfast, and a shower, I got ready to head out to the beach!
Some of the other girls in my program and I boarded a bus headed for Pornic, or Ste Marie Sur le Mer. Being a person who absolutely adores large expanses of water, I was pretty much in my element. When we arrived, we found that the tide was out, leaving lots of seabed uncovered. One friend was very eager to look for starfish, so we began searching the tide pools for interesting creatures.

 

The uncovered beach

After a long bout of searching, we actually found some starfish! Here is a picture of me with a starfish (my first live one ever!)...

It was pretty exciting!
Just as a quick side note: there was not a drop of rain nor cloud in the sky. Very unusual for this part of France. We kinda lucked out.
Anyways, after our finding of the starfish, we took a break to eat some lunch and catch a bit of sun. Vitamin D was had by all!
We continued to make our way down the beach, pausing for photo shoots with crashing waves and beautiful scenery. We finally came to the swimming area, which was a little inlet where it was all sand, and no rocks. The first, and only time, I have ever swam in the ocean was on a trip to PEI with my family, about 8 years ago. I was pretty pumped to swim in the ocean again.
And I was not disappointed! The waves were HUGE! I have never seen waves so big in my whole life. The Atlantic kinda beats Lake Huron on this one. While everyone else only played in the waves for a bit, I was in the water until everyone started to leave. The waves were just too fun! Some of them were even as tall as I am (not that tall, I suppose, but to me they were!), and I had to jump so that I didn't get dragged out to sea. It was pretty exciting. Here is a photo taken by my wonderful photographer friend, Michelle, of a couple of friends and I playing in the waves:

As you can see, it was tons of fun. I could have stayed in the water all day!
After eating some ice cream and laying on the beach, it was time for us to catch the bus back. Sadly, our beach day had to end but I'm sure that I will be back at some point. You can't keep me away from the water!
The perfect finishing touch to the day was a stroll through the Hipprodrome and other random places with a friend. I love walking, and being in a new place; walks always take you somewhere you haven't seen before. I am looking forward to continuing my exploration of this beautiful city!
All in all, it was a truly fantastic day. How better to spend ones day than with good friends, delicious baguettes, constant sunshine, and an ocean?