A Wonderful Day in Montpellier
I wrote this, exhausted, when I got back from Montpellier on Saturday night...
***
What a delight it was to have woken up this morning! I had a truly great day today. Rehana and Paola (a friend she's made, from Spain) invited me to go with them to Montpellier, so off we went (along with another girl from Spain, Miriam) at 7:30 this morning to the Gare SNCF to catch the train.
First of all, it was a beautiful, fresh, crisp day. The morning chill perked us up just enough so that we could determine where to transfer when we got to Marseille, after which the comfort and gentle rocking of the train caused us all to kinda doze off.
We arrived in Montpellier sometime around 11, and walked up to the Place de la Comedie to begin our day. After taking some pictures of the surrounding architecture and the statue of les Trois Graces (three Greek-lookin' naked chicks standing in the middle of a pool of water), we sat down for a coffee in a nearby cafe. We grabbed a map from the Tourist Office, checked out the flea market happening on the Champ de Mars, then meandered through the streets of the Old Centreville (there's always an old centreville...). We had no real agenda, and no real course of action - I was a tad concerned at first that we'd miss out on a lot of stuff, but in the end I think we had a pretty fulfilling day. We looked in a few of the shops, and continued weaving through the heart of the city, eventually coming across the Medical and Law buildings of the University, and beside it, the Jardin des Plantes. Woohoo! Free entry! I tip my hat to you, (dude whose name I forget who dedicated the garden to the students of Montpellier). The garden is full of neat trees and shrubs and even a small forest of bamboo! By this time we were getting hungry, so we found a nice grassy spot near the pond and had a li'l picnic in the sun. I'm not sure how much time we spent there, but I remember just sitting there and feeling content and serene and truly glad to be where I was. So we sat, and ate, and chatted, and tried to lure the garden's cat away from where we were with scraps because Miriam is allergic.
After having our fill, we left the park and walked up to the Arc de Triomphe (they seem to be common as well). We strolled across the huge open place (self-?)dedicated to Louis XIV, saw a statue of him riding a horse, and then discovered at the end of the plaza the massive aqueduct that runs away from the centreville. Pressing on, we went back through the lower part of the centreville, again, not having a true destination, but stopping wherever something caught our eye. We came across a church (of Ste. Anne, I believe) and discovered that inside was not so much a church as it was an exhibit for...a...comic...book. An Edgar P. Jacobs comic, in fact; "Blake et Mortimer" in "Le Mystere de la Grande Pyramide". The exhibit featured some original sketches and prints of the comic, as well as letters written to Jacobs from historians and museum curators suggesting how to make his comic refer to Egypt in a historically accurate way. There was also a film version of the book playing, but we didn't watch it. Instead, we continued walking, and went into a little antique book store...not just used books, but USED books. Much like the antique book market that happens in Aix on the first Sunday of every month, the shop had some reeeeally old tomes that you can pick up and leaf through and smell if you really want and buy if you've got a hundred Euros or so. They also had affordable stuff, though. I picked up a copy of Stendhal's "Le Rouge et le Noir" that was published in 1929 (to fit beside my 1946 copy of Flaubert's "Mme Bovary"...that's for you, Prof Breaugh), and Rehana managed to find a copy of "Le Petit Prince", but....30 Euros, I dunno, seemed pretty steep.
We walked around some more, but were getting tired, so we set out to find a salon de the, and despite the fact it was only 4pm, everything seemed to be closed! We came back around to near Place de la Comedie, and for some reason, the streets were just PACKED with people! We bustled through, and eventually found a creperie to sit down. Our server was a total jerk, but, I'm not going to go there, because it was a good day, and I'm not going to let that ponytail-wearing xenoph---*ahem* The crepes were delicious!
The sun was setting, but Paola's mother had made the suggestion that we go see the Polygone and Antigone part of the city, since it was designed by a Catalan architect. The Polygone houses a shopping mall, into which we did not enter. We continued down around to Antigone, which is a post-modern roman-architecture-inspired mixed commercial-residential complex spanning for a few blocks. I thought it was neat. Walking down the middle of the complex the buildings kind of loom over you though... It's in that same area they have an Olympic swimming pool too! So we saw that, and...didn't really know what to do with ourselves.
It wasn't quite yet 7pm, and our train back to Marseille wasn't for two hours or so, thus we headed back to the centreville. We came across a wine bar and each had a glass of Merlot, three variants from the Languedoc-Roussillon region, and Paola had the Catalan. We had some decent talk over our wine, and it made a perfect touch to finish off the day.
I would say that Montpellier seemed to be a more pleasant place than how I see Aix, because it doesn't seem to be as superficial or snobbish (despite the jerk-waiter), and has nicer architecture and streets, and a tramway... Aix is of course smaller, and has a different commercial base, etc...I dunno, I just don't feel quite right here in Aix yet. There's still a lot that I have yet to discover, however, and one day in another city doesn't really give a fair means for comparison.
What counts is that I really enjoyed myself, and I will have fond memories of Montpellier.
***
What a delight it was to have woken up this morning! I had a truly great day today. Rehana and Paola (a friend she's made, from Spain) invited me to go with them to Montpellier, so off we went (along with another girl from Spain, Miriam) at 7:30 this morning to the Gare SNCF to catch the train.
First of all, it was a beautiful, fresh, crisp day. The morning chill perked us up just enough so that we could determine where to transfer when we got to Marseille, after which the comfort and gentle rocking of the train caused us all to kinda doze off.
We arrived in Montpellier sometime around 11, and walked up to the Place de la Comedie to begin our day. After taking some pictures of the surrounding architecture and the statue of les Trois Graces (three Greek-lookin' naked chicks standing in the middle of a pool of water), we sat down for a coffee in a nearby cafe. We grabbed a map from the Tourist Office, checked out the flea market happening on the Champ de Mars, then meandered through the streets of the Old Centreville (there's always an old centreville...). We had no real agenda, and no real course of action - I was a tad concerned at first that we'd miss out on a lot of stuff, but in the end I think we had a pretty fulfilling day. We looked in a few of the shops, and continued weaving through the heart of the city, eventually coming across the Medical and Law buildings of the University, and beside it, the Jardin des Plantes. Woohoo! Free entry! I tip my hat to you, (dude whose name I forget who dedicated the garden to the students of Montpellier). The garden is full of neat trees and shrubs and even a small forest of bamboo! By this time we were getting hungry, so we found a nice grassy spot near the pond and had a li'l picnic in the sun. I'm not sure how much time we spent there, but I remember just sitting there and feeling content and serene and truly glad to be where I was. So we sat, and ate, and chatted, and tried to lure the garden's cat away from where we were with scraps because Miriam is allergic.
After having our fill, we left the park and walked up to the Arc de Triomphe (they seem to be common as well). We strolled across the huge open place (self-?)dedicated to Louis XIV, saw a statue of him riding a horse, and then discovered at the end of the plaza the massive aqueduct that runs away from the centreville. Pressing on, we went back through the lower part of the centreville, again, not having a true destination, but stopping wherever something caught our eye. We came across a church (of Ste. Anne, I believe) and discovered that inside was not so much a church as it was an exhibit for...a...comic...book. An Edgar P. Jacobs comic, in fact; "Blake et Mortimer" in "Le Mystere de la Grande Pyramide". The exhibit featured some original sketches and prints of the comic, as well as letters written to Jacobs from historians and museum curators suggesting how to make his comic refer to Egypt in a historically accurate way. There was also a film version of the book playing, but we didn't watch it. Instead, we continued walking, and went into a little antique book store...not just used books, but USED books. Much like the antique book market that happens in Aix on the first Sunday of every month, the shop had some reeeeally old tomes that you can pick up and leaf through and smell if you really want and buy if you've got a hundred Euros or so. They also had affordable stuff, though. I picked up a copy of Stendhal's "Le Rouge et le Noir" that was published in 1929 (to fit beside my 1946 copy of Flaubert's "Mme Bovary"...that's for you, Prof Breaugh), and Rehana managed to find a copy of "Le Petit Prince", but....30 Euros, I dunno, seemed pretty steep.
We walked around some more, but were getting tired, so we set out to find a salon de the, and despite the fact it was only 4pm, everything seemed to be closed! We came back around to near Place de la Comedie, and for some reason, the streets were just PACKED with people! We bustled through, and eventually found a creperie to sit down. Our server was a total jerk, but, I'm not going to go there, because it was a good day, and I'm not going to let that ponytail-wearing xenoph---*ahem* The crepes were delicious!
The sun was setting, but Paola's mother had made the suggestion that we go see the Polygone and Antigone part of the city, since it was designed by a Catalan architect. The Polygone houses a shopping mall, into which we did not enter. We continued down around to Antigone, which is a post-modern roman-architecture-inspired mixed commercial-residential complex spanning for a few blocks. I thought it was neat. Walking down the middle of the complex the buildings kind of loom over you though... It's in that same area they have an Olympic swimming pool too! So we saw that, and...didn't really know what to do with ourselves.
It wasn't quite yet 7pm, and our train back to Marseille wasn't for two hours or so, thus we headed back to the centreville. We came across a wine bar and each had a glass of Merlot, three variants from the Languedoc-Roussillon region, and Paola had the Catalan. We had some decent talk over our wine, and it made a perfect touch to finish off the day.
I would say that Montpellier seemed to be a more pleasant place than how I see Aix, because it doesn't seem to be as superficial or snobbish (despite the jerk-waiter), and has nicer architecture and streets, and a tramway... Aix is of course smaller, and has a different commercial base, etc...I dunno, I just don't feel quite right here in Aix yet. There's still a lot that I have yet to discover, however, and one day in another city doesn't really give a fair means for comparison.
What counts is that I really enjoyed myself, and I will have fond memories of Montpellier.
posted by Emily at 10:36 a.m.
1 Comments:
Wow, your experience there seemed so much better than mine... which was in a sentence: Get off the train in a town I neevr heard of, see a big building reading "Comedie", get lost, internet cafe, get lost, train out of there.
I agree with you on the superficial thing though, or rather, it not being really superficial.
It seemed to have a light small town feeling to it. At least during the times I wasn't almost being hit by those street trains that would just apear on the road out of no where.
The stone pillers that would grow and receid into the streets were really awesome too.
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