Montpellier

Day of sightseeing. Trusty Google told us that there was walking tour in English at 1030 am. Trusty google maps to the rescue again! Arrived at the carpark of the Comedie theatre but no guide. We waited around and in the end hired some audio sets from the tourism office for a self guided tour. Before setting off, we had to have the obligatory coffee. Damn, by the time we finished our coffees, the walking guide showed up! What a bugger but we decided to go with him anyway. He took us on a 2 hour walk around the old city and was full of interesting and historical facts. Tipped him 50 Euros which was good value between the four of us.

It was a great tour. More interesting was when he took us into the faculty of Medicine. This school has hosted several prominent figures of medicine. Peyronie who described the bent dickie syndrome and Morgani who describe a little testicular cyst. Come to think of it, I am not sure I want to be know in history for those conditions!

Then we had lunch at the local “local” restaurant serving the local specialty of sausage and mash (Called aligot). It all seemed very British to us but the twist was that the sausage was locally made and you can actually taste the pork in the sausage and the mash was enriched with a good amount of cheese. It all slid down easily with a bottle of the local red. To tell the truth, we haven’t had a bad bottle of wine yet. As the logo on a T-shirt said, life is too short to drink bad wine!

After lunch, Deb and I retired to the hotel for a much needed post-prandial nap. We woke up to thunder and torrential rain which lasted only an hour before clearing. It was much needed as the day was quite humid and the rain had freshen everything up. We met up with the Stocks (who went shopping) at the mini Arche Triomphe which signified the entrance to the city. Beyond the arche, was the Place Royale du Peyrou which is basically a huge park with a folly at the end. Great views from the elevated park. The park is a bit run down and needs some TLC.

By the way, Montpellier is university town. The guide told us that 2 out of 3 people in the city is University. I’d believe that as it is the only place this trip that I have seen so many young people. All the French villages we’ve been to have looked like Nursing home towns. I feel quite at home as it seems that the majority of people smoke.

We all came to the same conclusion regarding dinner for the night - we need some spice. Indian food was the food du jour. We found a little indian restaurant (the Puja, I guess they forgot the n and b for Punjab). The indian food is different from what we were used to (as it wasn’t really very spicy) but it was tasty and plenty of it! The worst thing about the dinner is that it was a climb uphill back to our hotel.

We will try for an early start, missing breakfast to get on the road to Cannes. Who knows, we might even catch up with the Kardasians.