Riverside spot with a good French bistro menu.

With my base camp in Biarritz I decided to spend the day in Bayonne. Dead easy to get there by bus, 20 minutes and only one Euro per journey. Nice little cathedral city to wander round if you don’t mind the tourist umbrella parties. The Bouteille is a nice place, by the river as the name suggests. They did me a splendid entrecote frites and a glass of house red for not too much money. Why are the chips always so deep brown round here? Further upstream is an open-air market with lots of food stalls and cafes at half the price of the Bouteille but it’s worth it if you get a table by the river here. I would avoid eating around Les Halles as it is a tourist trap. Also, the ham from the “official” Bayonne ham shop in town is about 3x the price you can get it in the market at Biarritz.