The next day we set off
for Arcachon and arrived in time for lunch.
We booked into the Park Hotel, a former
Mercure now operated by SAS, and asked the
receptionist for a lunch recommendation.
She directed us to Diego Place just around
the corner.
This was archetypical French
seafood restaurant with piles of seafood
outside and a man ready to open shells and
build fantastic seafood platters. Located
on the sea front, with a promenade area
between the tables and the Arcachon basin:
this is not only a place serving great seafood:
but also a place serving great views. On
a sunny day sit outside and enjoy that
The seafood platter was vast offering with
langoustine, oysters, prawns, mussels and
a whole crab; as usual this vast offering
was bulked out by bulots (snails). This
was my one, and standard, complaint: I do
not particularly like raw snails. And just
to make matters worse I am allergic to snails.
For that I can blame the Trust House at
Manchester airport: but that is an awful
long time ago! However we did our worst
and not much was left by the end. We did
reflect that one platter between the two
of us would have sufficed! I then made a
decision based on indecision. I could not
decide what pud. to have: we had decided
to forgo a main course. So I had the dessert
gourmand: greedy plate as it was dubbed
in English. It was indeed that: I was expecting
a tiny portion of all deserts: instead I
got a full portion of most deserts. For
once I happily let others feed from my plate!
One
item had caught out attention among the
main courses: it was a large Dover sole.
We had set our hearts of that: the surfeit
of seafood has rather knocked us back. So
there was only one thing to do: go back
for dinner and have the sole. This we did
and it was delicious! 
