Get your kicks in glitzy Biarritz
SUNDAY morning at Biarritz’s Les Halles market and elderly women in high heels and colourful silk neck scarves are out in force, their fluffy dogs peering out of their designer handbags.
Stalls are piled high with crusty French sticks, huge cheese wheels and mountains of creamy Gateau Basque, a regional sweet-custard pastry.
At the back, groups of locals are gathering among the fishmongers to slurp on platters of lemony oysters and sip white wine in what’s become a Sunday ritual for many.
Biarritz, in France’s southwest, is a town of dichotomies; glamorous grannies mingle with scruffy surfers, designer boutiques sit next to Quiksilver and Billabong stores. But all the locals have one thing in common; they’re handsome, hip and healthy.
The town has long attracted the rich and royal since Napoleon III and his Spanish- born wife, Eugenie, visited in the mid-19th century and later set up shop here.
The great and good followed as ‘ reigning monarchs from all over Europe headed for Biarritz [on a] special train’, recalled Clive James in his Postcard From Biarritz. ‘ There was a commingling of crowns, a tangling of tiaras’, he said. Even Queen Victoria turned up.
The aristos are still here. But so too are the tech entrepreneurs who spend their lunch breaks surfing, and the social media influencers with millions of followers to match the money in their banks.
I’m here for a long weekend with my mother. We know the town well as my brother, Charlie, has lived here for the best part of a decade (minus a threeyear stint in London which sent him paddling back across the Channel on his surfboard in search of the good life he left).
BUT we’ve always struggled to find somewhere suitable to stay when we don’t fancy slumming it in his office-cum-spare room.
That’s until now, thanks to the re-opening of Le Regina, a creamy belle epoque building overlooking the Bay of Biarritz which has been welcoming high-society guests on and off since 1907.
‘Here the Biarritz of American millionaires and affluent Spaniards dance till dawn,’ one newspaper said of the hotel in 1920.
There doesn’t seem to be any dancing today but the hotel, which was reopened by the trendy Paris-based Experimental Group in June, is already busy with guests from around the world.
Ridiculously attractive French families relax by the chic outdoor pool; young American couples dressed in Gucci and Dior sip on cocktails, and elderly Spanish couples from across the border read newspapers in the bar.
We’re staying in a Superior Room with views overlooking the crashing ocean and famous lighthouse.
Everything is retro- cool and nautical, with marine stripes, a heavy gold shell knocker on our front door and blue and white check bathroom tiles which match our fluffy white slippers embroidered with blue fish and wave motifs.
All 72 bedrooms and suites are centred around a cavernous 15-metre atrium, which has an Eiffel-style glass roof, retro sofas and a liner-like bar serving creative cocktails.
One evening before dinner we take a stroll along the coast path to the lighthouse that we’ve been admiring through our bedroom window.
Under its shade, we sip on Aperol spritz next to barefoot, salty- haired surfers who prop up their boards against the clifftop benches, before heading back to the hotel’s restaurant, Frenchie.
Plates of melon sorbet with red tuna and John Dory with samphire and braised fennel are delivered to our table as the sun dips into the ocean and musicians begin strumming their guitars.
Prices here may be as steep as the gigantic rollers which crash against the rocks outside (think £25 for an aubergine starter, £34 for a lamb main) but the dishes are an Instagrammer’s dream, popping with colour and tiny, creative detail. We’re here during the European heatwave. But, thankfully, we get neither the 44c experienced elsewhere on the Continent nor the rain that so often falls in Biarritz ( it happens to be the rainiest city in France). Instead, we’re blessed with 28c sunshine and a refreshing Atlantic breeze.
It’s the beginning of the summer holidays and the crowds are gathering on Biarritz’s beaches, so we head tenminutes south to Bidart, a small village with a delightful square and beach with sand the colour of custard. The water seems bluer here, too, and the waves are rolling in, so we spend the day dipping in and out of the surf while bronzed women sunbathe topless and muscular men run through the shallows with their huge shaggy dogs in tow. As the afternoon breeze picks up, we head to Bidart’s beach bar which overlooks the water for yet more Aperol spritz and pintos, the regional equivalent of tapas. Food is big business in Biarritz, and, like Frenchie, prices can be high.
But there are plenty of options for thosee on a budget tootoo. On our last evening, we head across the road to Le Regina’s sister hotel, Le Garage, a former automobile garage that was converted into an Experimental boutique hotel in 2020.
Overlooking a delightful outdoor pool surrounded by swaying palms, we enjoy local wine with a generous mezze of olive tapenade, creamy hummus and tzatziki before finishing with scoops of sugary strawberry sorbet. The bill? Just £40.
Rooms are cheaper here, too, at £123 a night, compared to Le Regina’s £268 a night.
But it’s worth splashing out on Le Regina if you can. It is, after all, Biarritz’s crowning glory once again.
TRAVEL FACTS
DOUBLE rooms at Le Regina hotel start from £ 268 ( reginaexperimental.com). Stansted- Biarritz returns from £33 ( ryanair.com).