The journey from Aix to Montpellier is approximately three hours long and includes a comfort break in Nimes. When getting Flixbus to Montpellier, the coach stop is quite far out of town at Parking de Sabines, but we were able to get a tram directly to the centre on ligne 2 with a return ticket at €2.30. The tram stopped just before the main train station, where it terminated that day due to the gilets jaunes presence.
Having grabbed a snack from the Casino in the train station (Belin Monaco crackers are cheaper than a sandwich), we had a walk down the main wide streets in Montpellier. This included the Place de la Comedie – the main square – and Montpellier’s very own triumphal arch: the Porte du Peyrou.
As we walked, we encountered a brass band busking outside the cathedral with a Muppet Miss Piggy moneybox. It was a lovely reminder of home and watching my housemates busk at the Christmas market in Birmingham last year with their own brass band. Rather bizarrely there were bicycles embedded in the concrete of the walls nearby.
Sadly the gardens of the Promenade de Peyrou were shut for the day because of the gilets jaunes protests – which had defaced the Arc de Triomphe in Paris earlier in the year – meaning we couldn’t enjoy the views over the city from them. Several brave French tourists (or locals?) dared to climb onto the barbed wall and shuffle along to climb over at the point where if you fell, you’d probably break something.
Because we weren’t able to do a loop of the city through the parks, we ended up in a slightly more dodgy area where we received more harassment than was welcome. However, always dreaming of a future home, we dived into a homeware shop that Jess and I had previously seen in Marseille on our first visit there. On our exit, I was shocked to see the security guard inspect each one of our bags to check we’d not stolen anything – clearly a policy in that quartier, and a testament to its dodginess. We headed back towards the centre of town and continued wandering the streets, eventually ending up in the Vieux Quartier which featured its fair share of cute cafes and boujee or alternative shops. Upon entering one of these, I realised I’d been inside before when I visited Montpellier for my first time with my French friend Celine in 2015! It was a strange sense of deja vu!
Our day ended with a tasty dinner in the Place de la Comedie – the only place serving dinner before 7pm! This was interrupted just as we awaited our desserts by the gilets jaunes protests becoming aggressive, which I wrote a separate article on for the UoB newspaper.
I’m looking forward to going back to Montpellier for a longer day, and when it’s not a gilets jaunes demonstration, as it’s a beautiful city. Now I’ve explored the streets a little, I have a hankering to be more of a tourist!
A plus,
Zoe x
An Aixpat-en-Provence 