Montpellier — Sunday Escapades

You may or may not have noticed I chose not to blog yesterday (Saturday 7th Oct), mainly due to the fact that most of what we did wasn't that interesting. But a brief overview was that we left Perpignan at about 11am taking the motorways but putting into Google Maps to "avoid tolls" which often takes you on a strange route that we frequently query and adds a bit more time. I was driving this morning and the motorways on ramps vary so much sometimes it does my head in. One on ramp you are allowed to drive straight on and merge like we do at home, another I almost went through a stop sign straight onto the 110km/hr motorway and then another one the on ramp came around in a circle and didn't have a merging lane so you came around the bend and you were in the middle of it So very confusing and dangerous! Since check in for our next place in Montpellier wasn't until 3pm we decided to drive via a couple of small towns called Agde and Sete that are on the coast. Agde we ended up in the middle of a nudist colony that was luckily mostly uninhabited (summer's over :/) along the beachfront. Sete we planned to stop but hadn't done any research as to what we would possibly be doing there anyways so we continued onto Montpellier. We arrived on a Saturday afternoon and didn't realise that we were staying right in town in Place de la Comedie where they have a massive market every week. We drove through thousands of people on streets that you couldn't turn around in to get out and we didn't even know if it was allowed. Thankfully our Airbnb host met us at a underground parking building (under Place de la Comedie) which was very close to their apartment and showed us in. We were then able to move all our stuff up to the third floor loft before moving the car into some cheaper parking on the street. Safe to say it was very tense and we were both very hungry. The town was crazy busy with people everywhere and all the street shops had stalls outsides. We managed to gather enough food to make fajitas for dinner and for the first time since we left London we actually relaxed and watched TV! That basically summed up yesterday.

Today Sunday 8th October my family in Christchurch were having a big roast dinner together with my Nannie, cousins Ben and Will who were down from Auckland, my brothers and parents. I woke up at 7am local French time and messaged mum about a good time to call. I had planned to at least shower so I could video call them but mum ring me straight away and I ended up running downstairs to speak to them in my PJs. It felt like I was still in Auckland and could be in on the excitement myself in just an hours fight away when we were actually on the other side of the world. Nannie has been catching up with the blogs and said she was disappointed I didn't have a ring on my finger after Paris! I told her that was much to cliche and not what I wanted. My brothers Tayler and Mason had also decided that if Lew took too long (for those of you who don't know it was 7 years last month) and I had to propose to him (not happening by the way!) then he would have to become a Kennedy😂. Gosh we just can't get away from the pressure even moving to the other side of the world! After saying goodbye to them we ate some breakfast - the toast here tastes so revolting compared to home and tried to plan our day. We though since it was beautiful and sunny we would just walk around town. The Airbnb we are staying in is a loft with a mezzanine floor in which the bedroom and bathroom is on so we only have ceiling windows that you can open. We walked out into the Place de la Comedie where we were staying and was covered with thousands of people yesterday to find it basically empty! Walking around town all the shops that had caught my eye last night but I wasn't in the mood to shop were also closed. We spend most of our time taking photos of the shop names and putting markers on our phones so we could come back tomorrow when they are open. We did also see a few of the sights around town - Saint Roch Church, Arc de Triomphe, Saint Clement Aqueduct, the Peyrou Water Tower and St Pierre Cathedral to name a few. Since we were right there we grabbed some fresh sausages, potatoes and cucumber for dinner tonight at the same small market. Plus we had to get that staple food item called a baguette from the patisserie also.

Arriving back in the apartment I hung the washing out (finally someone supplied is us with a clothes rack!) and we had left over fajitas for lunch. We planned to head out to the beach since it was a beautiful 24 degrees and not a cloud in sight. The initial plan was to bike or tram but we figured we had the car and may as well use it. It was parked about 15 minutes away which was a short walk and we were pleased to see the red number plates from afar as Lew really questioned whether it was safe to leave it here last night. The drive took about 20 minutes on the motorway and we popped out at the beachfront. Being Sunday the parking was also free here and we left the car and walked into the beach. There was a reasonable amount of people around and the occasional person swimming despite the water feeling rather chilly - you could tell seeing as the topless swimmers had rather cone shaped looking nipples so we knew it must be cold. Haha I am joking, we tested it out with our own feet but there were a few topless sunbathers around. We lay on the beach for a couple of hours whilst I read my book and Lew researched something on his phone. It about 4pm when he decided to take a dip as no matter how cold it is he usually tried it out. We walked back to the car at 5pm whilst the sun was still shinning high in the sky. We moved the car a little closer in the public parks to where we are staying since we planned to move it into the paid parking again whilst we moved our stuff out of the Airbnb and went shopping :D. We ate dinner and tried to find some Ice Hockey games we could watch whilst in France or Switzerland and also booked some more Airbnb accomodation. Tomorrow we were moving to Nimes for a couple of nights and once again we have booked an apartment right in the middle of town! At least they wont be having a city wide market on a Monday but no doubt it will be stressful finding the place.