France
Biarritz
Atlantic rollers smashing against Art Deco balustrades where surfers and emperors share the same waves.
The Atlantic hits the rocks and the spray reaches the promenade where Art Deco railings still carry the patina of salt and empire. Biarritz in France straddles two identities — the 19th-century resort where Empress Eugénie bathed and the surf town where European wave culture was born on the Grande Plage in 1957. Both are still here, sharing the same coastline without apology.
Biarritz sits on the Basque coast where the Pyrenees drop into the Bay of Biscay, a position that generates some of the most consistent surf breaks in Europe. Napoleon III's wife Empress Eugénie established the town as a fashionable resort in the 1850s, commissioning the Villa Eugénie — now the Hôtel du Palais — on the seafront. Surfing arrived in 1957 when American screenwriter Peter Viertel rode the first waves here, triggering a surf culture that now anchors the town's economy. The Rocher de la Vierge, a rock formation connected to the mainland by a walkway designed by Gustave Eiffel, offers views across the Basque coast to Spain. The old town's backstreets function as an extension of Basque Country, with pintxos bars serving small plates alongside txakoli wine until late.
Solo
Surf in the morning, pintxos in the afternoon, coast path to Bidart in the evening. Biarritz has the energy of a surf town and the architecture of a lost empire — the contrast is interesting alone.
Couple
The Grande Plage at sunset, with the Art Deco hotels lit behind you and the Atlantic darkening ahead. Follow it with a pintxos crawl through the old quarter — the Basque influence turns every bar into a shared discovery.
Friends
The surf breaks, the pintxos bars, the coast path, the late-night txakoli — Biarritz delivers the kind of shared days that generate stories for years afterward.
- Atlantic swells roll in consistently — the Grande Plage is where European surfing began in 1957.
- Art Deco hotels from the 1920s line the seafront alongside the Rocher de la Vierge — the built and the wild side by side.
- Basque pintxos bars fill the backstreets with small plates, txakoli wine, and a convivial noise that lasts until midnight.
- The coast path from Biarritz to Bidart passes dramatic rock formations, tidal pools, and secret coves between the main beaches.
Pintxos crawl through the old town — Basque tapas piled on the bar, washed down with txakoli.
Gâteau Basque — a buttery cake filled with either cherry jam or pastry cream, never both.
Jericoacoara
Brazil
Windswept dunes where the sun melts into the sea from a natural stone arch.
St Ives
England
Light so luminous it lured a century of painters to this harbour of turquoise shallows.
Tulpar-Köl
Kyrgyzstan
Alpine pools at 3,500 metres that mirror a 7,000-metre peak at dawn like shattered glass.
Philae Temple
Egypt
A temple rescued from rising waters, reassembled stone by stone on an island in the Nile.
Sénanque Abbey
France
Cistercian silence surrounded by lavender rows so purple they vibrate in the June heat.
Mont-Saint-Michel
France
A granite abbey rising from quicksand flats where the tide races in faster than horses.
Étretat
France
Chalk arches punched through sea cliffs like cathedral windows opening onto the Channel.
Porquerolles
France
Car-free island trails through umbrella pines to beaches with Caribbean water and no crowd.