Montpellier (France)
02 SEP 2015
02 SEP 2015
Don't let the title fool you, I have nothing against Montpellier, actually, I was more than disappointed that we only spent an evening there, it looked to be an incredibly beautiful city. One of those towns that seemed to have everything on my list 'intriguing, fascinating and enjoyable'. As you already know however, this trip was not one of 'those trips'. I had no real control over duration, where we were going or what we were doing. I was on 'the clock' of someone else, whose mission I didn't understand...not for the life of me.
This day started in another country, far on the north eastern coast of Italy. Once again, we bounded out of Venice with rigour and purpose. Why? Who the hell knows why! All I know is that my cousin was aiming to get as far as he could in the amount of daylight that we had possible, and so we drove, Vicenza, Verona & Brescia, then the chaos of the traffic moving in and out of Milan. It was like nothing that I'd seen before. Three lanes of slow moving steel, plastic and rubber, columns of trucks that went for mile, after mile. The Northern part of Italy was just an endless procession of vehicles carrying cargo to and from destinations. Our only objective was to get around it somehow and head on our merry way.
It took a bit of time but somewhere around midday we hit Genoa and then set ourselves for a cruise down the Riviera. Great scenery (from the motorway), it looked as though there were plenty of places where you could put your feet up, enjoy an Aperol Spritz and watch the sun settle over the Mediterranean.
Italian Riviera
Italian Riviera
Italian Riviera
Somewhere in the afternoon we dropped into Monaco, more so that I could just add another country onto my 'been-there' list. It was what you'd expect of Monaco, flush with money, flush with ritz and glamour. Not too hard to see it on the streets, more than just ostentatious, it was like different level wealth.
Still, 'nothing to see here', we had to move on of course, we had to get to ....'who knows where' by 'who knows what time' for 'who knows what reason', so back we were, bundled into the car and heading to our next destination, which we figured out as Montpellier.
We arrived there in later afternoon, with no accommodation booked. Something that didn't appear to be a problem to me but apparently became one. What I didn't know then but what I should have probably anticipated, is that my three other cohorts can turn on the hyper-anxiety and hyper-stress in an instant. Their penchant to become unnecessarily stressed regarding a mild situation, I know now is a common trait that all three feed off from one another. I didn't know that that, not at that time. So when we turned up looking for accommodation I though 'ok, perhaps 20 mins, perhaps 40 mins, perhaps an hour', we'll find a place. After our first few misses however the stress levels in the car went through the roof, why? Who the hell knows why! But it certainly wasn't needed. In any case, we did finally find a comfortable location close to the centre of the town, with some friendly fire taking place along the way. So for that night my aunt and cousin stayed in their rooms, both 'too tired' to do anything and my mum and I went for a walk to discover a little about Montpellier.
...And so I come back to the beginning. Montpellier looks like quite a beautiful town, as one commentator has put it, 'elegant, subversive and seductive', both a town of students and one infiltrated by IT specialists creating their own 'hub', its becoming interesting and complex in a fascinating way. Not that I knew any of this of course, all I could pick was the mix of old and new plus the smooth, lighter than air trams that would glide by with high frequency. To me it looked like a place where I could quite happily spend more than just a few hours but rather a few days. Not on this turn unfortunately. Never the less, its definitely on the list of places to revisit and hopefully that might be able to occur soon-ish.
