My fourth visitor in Montpellier - 2 June 2008

 

My intrepid travelling companion in India last year, and my very dear friend, Sally, came down to Montpellier for the last four days.  As she arrived on Monday late in the afternoon and we left on the TGV together early on Thursday morning, we had to make the most of our two full days.

 

Although I’d seen a great deal of the city during the previous three weeks, I found that there were still many more little streets to explore and various buildings to see from different angles.  Looking at the Cathédrale St Pierre from the back was just as imposing as it is from the front and sides!

 

 

Instead of just looking at the Piscine Olympique, we went inside to explore and found that the complex includes, not only the Olympic sized pool, but also a huge, more shallow pool for playing and relaxing in with an enormous slide, and above it all, a very well equipped gym which was full of people working out.  The Olympic pool is down below to the right of this picture and the gym area is on the upper floor, to the left.

 

 

Of course we did the usual café thing and wandered around the city at leisure.  Here, we’re looking down the wide avenue from the Place de la Comédie to the train station (which you can just see in the middle of the photo), which is pedestrianised apart from the trams.  It gives you an idea of the distances – not unlike walking around Wellington in many ways except that it’s flatter!

 

 

But our greatest adventure together was to hire two bicycles on our last day which turned out to be a glorious one!  It was hot and sunny but with quite a breeze so we didn’t get too hot.  We walked down into the city to hire our bicycles, paid 2 euros each for the day, relinquished the required identification (passport and driving licence with photo) and set off.  The cycle tracks around the city are fabulous and once you’ve found the right route out in the right direction (which is harder than it sounds!) the cycle track led us in an almost straight line for the nearest point of the ocean, 11km away at Carnot.  And it’s almost totally flat so it only took us about three quarters of an hour.  We arrived feeling extremely proud of ourselves and pretty exhausted.  Neither of us had ridden a bicycle for a month and there were some muscles around the back that we’d forgotten about!! 

 

We collapsed into two very comfy chairs in a café on the beach and ordered a drink, under a sort of coloured net canopy.  We decided to stay where we were for quite a little while, even though the beach you can see through the window behind us was very tempting!

 

 

Unfortunately, that’s when my camera ran out of battery which was a pity because we had a lovely couple of hours enjoying the sun and sand and sea and it was really very lovely.  We have to admit that the ride home was a little harder because the wind has risen a bit and was against us!  And we somehow took a wrong turn which added to the length of the journey.

 

We decided to keep our bicycles for just a little longer and rode across the Place de la Comédie to a café of our choice, astonished to find as all the pedestrians gave way to us!  We began to get quite confident about ringing our bells so that people would know that we were coming up behind them! 

 

But all good things come to an end and after a lovely dinner out at a restaurant in the Antigone, we took the tram home (because we were really quite weary!) and started to pack.

 

But the good news is that Sally loved Montpellier too.