Wed 30th Aug: Carcassonne ⇒ Montpellier
Our journey from Carcassonne to Montpellier was only a couple of hours but we couldn’t check in to the apartment in Montpelier until 4 pm, so we decided to visit the seaside area of Sete on the way. This, in hindsight, proved to be a very ambitious task; the area was packed, and the parking was challenging. After finding many of the parking stations were full or non-existent, we eventually ended up finding a street park but, then, trying to find a restaurant that would take us was even harder. Persistence prevailed though and we managed to find a place that would take us and we had an okay meal. Some of these restauranteurs do’t seem to like tourists but they’d literally be out of business without us!
It was then on to our apartment in Montpelier and we found this with relative ease. Our booking was sourced through Booking.com and the link can be found here. It was a lovely apartment and located just on the edge of the Old Town so was in quite a good location.
There was a bit of a story with this apartment though. On our drive up to Montpellier the host contacted us to say that the last set of guests had seen a rat on the terrace. He offered us alternative accommodation but this didn’t have a terrace so, after some thought, we decided to stick with our original booking. Our host, Thomas, then decided he would leave us his cat, out on the terrace, to try and chase the said rat. So the three of us, Mark, myself and Suki the cat, settled into the apartment for the afternoon.
Mark and I eventually left Suki and ventured out at about 5 pm to explore the local area and formed a very positive first view of Montpellier. There were lots of lovely cafes, restaurants, bars, but also shops, boutiques and markets. The city had loads of young people pointing to this being a living city and a university town. We were in the Old Town confines of the city yet it did not seem overly touristy, rather it seemed like it was full of local people, out drinking and enjoying the warm weather.
The only problem we were finding, yet again, was that most restaurants here don’t open until 7:30 pm. This just doesn’t wash for us, so we walked around until we found a place that was open, Cafe Leon, where we had an okay meal. However, I have now realised there is an inverse relationship between the quality of a restaurant and its opening time, the earlier they open, the worse they are.
It was then back to the apartment to have a glass of wine on the terrace, with Suki, and a relatively early night after a fairly full day.
Thurs 31st Aug
It was a slow start for us today and we didn’t venture out until our 10 am walking tour of the Old Town. Suki was alive and well and we didn’t wake to find any evidence of a caught rat which was pleasing. Our walking tour was with Montpellier Free Tours and our guide for the 2 hours was Vanessa. There were about 10 others in the group and I’d say not one of them was over 25 so, it was us and the kids! We had a bit of trouble understanding Vanessa, due to her strong Spanish, accent but we picked up a few things along the way. It was a good overall experience though as we were taken along a route through the city that we probably wouldn’t have discovered on our own, at least not in the short time we had here.
Some of the bits of information we picked up that piqued my interest:
- The Romans had not been in Montpellier
- Montpellier was a walled city but the walls were torn down down by King Louis 16th. There were originally 25 towers but only 2 are left and there were 7 gates
- There are loads of lovely little squares, or Places, throughout the Old Town and Vanessa explained that these were mostly originally Churches but they were torn down during the period of the Wars of Religion
- Montpellier is made up of 40% students and 30% retirees, so there are very few tax paying citizens which is an issue
Our positive view of the city was confirmed following this morning walk as we encountered even more lovely boutiques, shops and cafes. Montpellier Old Town feels like it is a living city and not just a tourist haunt. It was much cleaner than Bordeaux and seemed to be quite a bit more sophisticated.
Our tour wound up at around midday and we went to purchase some items from one of the Boulangerie venues that Vanessa had pointed out and that was voted number 1 in all of France back in 2015. However, I would say the croissants from Shuk, back home, were much better than the one we tried. We then stopped off at a cafe in the Jewish Quarter which was in a lovely, quiet and shady square where I successfully ordered a skim iced latte! Mark then went on to get a hair cut and I headed back to the apartment to make sure Suki had not torn our washing down from the clothes horse.
It was around 3.30 pm before we ventured back out and we headed to the shopping street of Rue de l’Ancien Courrier that we had spied on our morning walking tour. We poked around the boutiques along this strip for a while and then went on to have an ice cream and then a beer at Hopulus, which was another place pointed out on our morning walking tour. This was a popular local craft brewery venue and Mark greatly enjoyed their IPA! After that it was back to the apartment for a night of dining in and watching Netflix. Tomorrow we planned to visit Nimes by train for the day.
Friday 1st September
It was a beautiful sunny morning for our trip to Nîmes with the forecast set to hit 290 Celsius. We caught a 9 am train for the 25 min journey to Nîmes and successfully navigated the ticket purchase process via a touchscreen. We had to enter our name, date of birth, email and phone number; all for a 30 minute train trip!
Whilst I am on the train I will update you about our slight change of plans. We have enjoyed our time in Montpellier but, yet again, we now realise that we had allocated too many days for this visit. We had booked this apartment for 4 nights and we were meant to leave for Nice on Sunday. However, we had planned to visit Avignon tomorrow, Saturday, but have now decided that we will drive up to Avignon and then stay there for one night before heading on to Nice and to catch up with our son, Tom.
Nimes is often referred to as French Rome due to the number of well preserved Roman structures. The Romans built a wall around the city in 16 AD that extended for 7 km and had 80 towers with two gates but unfortunately there are only two gates left2 left: Porte de France and Porte Auguste. The wall was built as more of a political statement than for defensive purposes as it was primarily to assert Roman power. We only planned to spend a half day here so identified the key Roman features and prioritised visiting them.
Our first stop was at the 2,000 year old Arenes de Nemes that looked very much like the Colosseum from Rome. This Roman Amphitheater Was built in 139 CE and it was amazing to wander up and down the stairs, to the different levels, and realise that people have been doing this for thousands of years. There were some interesting facts we discovered as we explored the space with the use of an audio guide:
- Gladiators were free men who joined a troupe and attended gladiator school.
- Events were stopped in 3rd century, not due to rise in Christianity but due to a lack of resources and fighters.
- Arena means ‘sand’ in Latin and these arenas used sand as a base to soak up the blood!
- This Amphitheatre was turned into a residential area during the 14th century
- It was Napoleon 1 who started restoration of the amphitheater to preserve it as a monument and he had the dwellings demolished
- The amphitheater was used for bull fights after 1813 and the rent earned helped to pay for the restoration
- In recent years the amphitheater has been used for concerts featuring The Police, David Bowie, Elton John and Daft Punk as just some
The next Roman monument we visited was the tower of Tour Magne and this was about a 20 minute walk from Arenes de Nemes that took us up through the magnificent green space garden area of Jardins de la Fontaine. Tour Magne is the only remaining tower of the ancient wall and stands at the highest point in the city, which was handy as it offered a commanding view over the plain and trade routes. There were 107 steps to walk to the top of the tower, up a narrow and tightly winding stair case, so I was pleased there were only a few others visiting whilst we were there as it was rather claustrophobic. The view from the top was rather worth it though.
Our third stop was at the Corinthian Temple of Maison Carre that was built of limestone during the period of 1 BCE- 1 ACE. The temple stands 17 m high, 15 m wide and 26 m long and is one of the oldest gallo-Roman monuments in France. We encountered some young girls doing a dance routine in front of the monument which was rather entertaining but totally random! We went on to visit the Cathedral but found it was closed for restoration so went on to our final viewing which was of one of the two remaining gates to the city, Porte Auguste.
We also spent some time strolling around the Old Town area which was nice and clean and had lots of lovely patisseries, shops cafes and restaurants and we made a stop for lunch where Mark was finally able to sample some sardines. We could have spent more time here, wandering around the Old Town and visiting some museums, but we didn’t have the time, however, this is a place that you could easily spend a whole day exploring. It was then back on the train for the trip back to the apartment as we had some things to do and we needed to pack up for our departure tomorrow for Avignon.
It was 6.30 pm before we ventured back out as we had booked a restaurant, Angus and Bachus, that like most in the area didn’t open until 7.30 pm. It turned out to be a steak place and, irony of irony, the high profile steak on their menu turned out to be a rump from Australia! We both decided not to order this home grown steak though and I chose one from Argentina and Mark chose one from the UK; both were okay but mine was probably the better. Anyway, it was a lovely night to end our time in Montpellier.
We enjoyed our time in Montpellier, and more so than Bordeaux. This wasn’t simply because our accommodation in Montpellier was nicer but due to the city itself. Some people made excuses for Bordeaux’s grunginess as being due to the high student population but they have a high student population here in Montpellier as well so that just doesn’t wash. Montpellier is a much more sophisticated, cleaner and pleasant place to explore and we’d highly recommend people put this on their to-do list but a three night stay would be sufficient.
