Montpellier

We recently went to Montpellier for the day and fell in love with it. The fact that the sun was shining made the place feel even nicer. The population is largely young due to the university students. The architecture; greco Roman is beautiful and the whole place had a very relaxed calm feel to it. If it's action you are after in the Herault department then Montpellier is the place. There are lots of festivals held here mainly during the summer months many music orientated and lasting from a day to three weeks. The day we were there was gloriously warm and sunny enabling us to slowly stroll around taking everything in and even managing to take some photographs with a blue sky instead of the more recent dull grey! Practically everything is to be found off of the largely pedestrian old town from the 'place de la Comedie', which is situated right at the heart of Montpellier. The place de la Comedie is a large plaza with lots of restaurants/cafes surrounding it. There is also a tram stop there. All of the restaurants have large outside seating areas, we enjoyed a drink at several of the old cafes on our visit, all the walking was very thirsty work. At the northern end is the start of the Champs du Mars, a lovely park with a formal promenade and lots of little pathways and ponds. There is a small shopping centre near to the place de la Comedie the Triangle shopping centre part of the Antigone development. It is spread over several levels with an underground car park, it mainly houses clothes shops along with a small branch of Habitat and i was very pleased to see a Body Shop there as they sell a favourite lip balm of mine. Whilst very small compared to what we were used to back in the U.K. Montpellier was a refreshing change for us, having lived where we do in France for a while now this all seemed very big and busy! On our wander around we spotted a branch of Agnes B where we both bought ourselves a little something! The Musee Languedocien (Monday-Saturday 2pm-5pm; € 4.58) at 7 rue Jaques-Coeur has a very impressive fifteenth century facade belonging to the former Hotel De Tresoriers de France, there are medieval artefacts on display including thirteenth century ceramics, Flemish tapestries and pre Revolution furniture. The nearby place de Petrarch is enclosed by palaces the largest one being the Hotel de Varennes. The ground floor of this palace is almost entirely Gothic style.The first floor is home to the city's Musee de Montpellier (Tuesday- Saturday 9am-noon & 1:30pm-5pm; free admission). On the floor above is the Musee Fougau (Wednesday & Thursday 3pm-6:30pm; free admission) although neither hold anything that exciting, there are portraits of traditional rural life and costumes, tools related etc. Having planned to have lunch whilst we were there unfortunately after walking around for a few hours neither of us was hungry, which is not unusual for us, so we didn't bother eating. There are lots of restaurants there though and we even spotted a couple of Indian restaurants which smelt gorgeous as we passed, maybe next time. Neither of us like to be in the car after we have eaten so we often end up going all day without food preferring to fill up on liquid (not alcohol obviously)! We will definitely be visiting Montpellier again as it is not that far from our home. We thoroughly enjoyed our day there, it is so clean with just the right amount of life for us old timers!