Arcachon France
Frequently Asked Questions
By tender. Ships stay outside the channel and anchor offshore; tenders land at the Jetée Thiers or the nearby marina, right in the centre of the resort, facing the seafront terraces.
Yes, you step ashore in the town itself. The tree-lined promenade along the beach reaches the main districts in a few minutes, and bicycles can be rented steps from the landing.
A district of nearly three hundred nineteenth-century villas built on the heights, sheltered from the sea wind: turrets, carved wooden trim and verandas where Bordeaux society came to treat their lungs. It is a fifteen-minute walk up through the Parc Mauresque.
A public lift spares you the steepest section from the Parc Mauresque. It is the answer for visitors who walk with difficulty or are pushing a stroller.
By taxi or bus: the site is about 12 kilometres from the centre. The climb, helped by a staircase in season, takes about fifteen minutes, and the dune stands over a hundred metres high. Allow half a day round trip.
The mouth of the bay, the Banc d'Arguin and open Atlantic on one side, the pine forest on the other. It is the tallest dune in Europe and it is slowly advancing over the forest.
At an oyster shack in the Aiguillon district, where growers serve their oysters on wooden tables with rye bread, butter and a glass of dry white. You eat facing the beds where those same shells grew; count on half a dozen and thirty minutes.
From the Jetée Thiers, launches circle the Île aux Oiseaux and its two cabanes tchanquées, stilt houses that have become emblems of the bay. Other services cross to Cap Ferret, its red lighthouse and its oyster villages. These trips run one to two hours.
Because the bay is an inland sea opening to the Atlantic through a single channel, and the tide goes out twice a day. At low water, sandbanks and oyster beds are exposed, the channels narrow and the brightly painted pinasses run through them.
The euro and French. Cards are taken in shops and at most oyster shacks; a little cash is still handy at markets and for bike rentals.
