Saturday 13 July 2013

Casino

We went to the casino last night.  It opened at 8.30 pm, and was empty for a while.  So we had a drink out on the terrace, and cast our eyes down onto the beach where a guy was throwing something continually into the waves for his three dogs to fetch.  Two were German shepherds, and the other was like some sort of great big hairy black mountain dog.  One hundred metres to their left, young boys were leaping off the cliff into the ocean, swimming back to shore, and repeating the process.

The casino was quickly filling up with punters.  But there were only a few roulette tables, a poker room, and a couple of black jack tables.  The casino was kind of plush, like casinos usually are, with long fancy curtains, and daintily laid dinner tables by the windows, which overlooked La Grande Plage.  We played with 100 euros, and it took a fair while to lose this.  In the end, we lost only 65 euros.

In Australia, the croupier on the roulette tables does a sweeping motion with his arms across the table  and then says 'No more bets'.  They don't do that here.  And it's funny to hear the numbers being read out in French.  Also, there's something I'd never thought about before.  The English deck of cards has a 'K' for the King, a 'Q' for the Queen and a 'J' for the Jack.  In the French deck, there's an 'R' for the King, which is 'Roi' in French, a 'D', short for 'Dame' (woman) because 'Queen' in French is 'Reine', which also starts with 'R', and the Jack equivalent is V for Valet.  The German deck of cards would have a similar problem of the King and Queen starting with the same letter.

We're currently at Biarritz station, and we're waiting to head to Pamplona via Irun.  There was a train crash involving a high-speed rail service near Paris, resulting in some deaths and serious injuries.  It is causing delays.  We'll see how we go.  

Tomorrow in Pamplona is the running of the bulls!

1 comment:

  1. The casino was kind of plush, like casinos usually are... like in Canberra?

    ReplyDelete