Home safely

Tuesday morning started off OK. I had breakfast at the normal bistrot over the road and said goodbye and thank you to the very pleasant young man . He always patiently waited while I ordered or asked questions  about Paris or whatever in very slow, bad French.  His English was good.  A few hours later , after I had packed up I went downstairs to order an Uber. Trouble was I could see the cars loitering ( a nearby hospital helps) but it would not connect to any of them, just dropped out. Maybe tall buildings are a problem. So I went over the road, less tall buildings. The bistrot owner was standing outside. He came over to help.  Finally I got connected to one. Sit down, he says, and I will get you a coffee while you wait. How nice, but  I couldnot because it was almost there. He disappeared and came running out as I was getting into the uber with a bottle of water for me. 

Charles de Gaulle airport was packed and disorganised. Maybe they had just bought in a new system,  whtever, I got conflicting advice,  went up, alonb, then back down to here i ws before etc, and the signage was very poor. For example, at one point, eu passport holders went in one queue, according to the flag on the sign, the next queue hd a sign with a UK, US and Canada flag on it and the next queue said ' Everyone else'. I got in this queue, but I was told to go into the US, UK, Canada queue. I get what they were trying to do but couldn't they do better than that?  I followed all the signs, carefully, i had hours to fill in, but still I ended up getting my passport stamped twice. I did stop and have some of my water at some point. The lounge was good. When I finally got to the departure gate there were a group of 4, all completely overcrowded, no seats, people sitting all over the floor. To get a good deal  ( thru Lufthanser) I had to fly through Frankfurt. So going into Frankfurt , the girl who was going to stamp my passport took ages looking at it. It was new for this trip, so not many stamps. She was puzzled by the 2 exit stamps from Paris. I carefully, politely,  not being critical,  told her. Frankfurt to Singapore, Singapore  to Melbourne all went smoothly. But the timing was very bad because I ended up having 2 nights, the first I slept a bit, but not the second, last night. The plane to Melbourne got in about 10 minute early at 5.30. I got through quickly, went straight to the Qantas domestic lady and asked if I could get on an earlier flight. After a phone call, her shepherding me through security, and me running through a fairly deserted terminal I got onto a plane that started  boarding just before I started to talk to her. At 6am.  It is going to be hard to stay awake today.

Photos. Waiting in Singapore

I am currently  waiting in Singapore for my flight to Melbourne. So far so good. 2 flights finished, 2 to go.

Below are a few photos from my last days in Paris.

From boat on Canal St Martin about to go into a lock and then tunnel

Reflections from boat going through tunnel

Notre Dame without its spire

From Butte Bergeyre looking toward Sacre Coeur 

I am sure other big cities must have tiny houses like these, but several locals told me to go and 

look at them because they are rare in Paris.

Monday Last full day in France...

... this trip, I hope. I am due to fly to Frankfurt at 6.25 pm tomorrow.  I know i will not settle in the morning so will go to the airport when I am ready in the morning. My travel agent got back to me and said it was expensive to change the ticket. The airport staff should have sorted themselves out by the evening.

This morning I went out at 8ish, there was no one around. Public holiday for 1 st  May. Workers day.  Again, no usual cafes open. But some have opened later.  The place I had brunch yesterday was open , I went there and got talking to a local who is a tour guide. He was meeting a group from Houston. We talked for about an hour. He has been to Australia and knows how vast it is compared to European countries. Earlier I was talking to the lady behind the bar. She told me to be careful, there were many manifestations , the French word for protests. I said i was going to look at Place de Bastille ( having just read Tale of 2 cities ( read is a loose term, I read probably 2/3 to 3/4  of each page. Dickens is very wordy))  She waggled her finger at me ' No, No' nor Place de Republic etc . So she told me of some nice little places to the NW of here. The first was a garden like others I have seen,, which are only open to visitors occasionally  but locals have a key.  Usuually vegies and flowers all muddled up. i donot think individual allotments, sort of joint. There was a good view of Sacre Coeur  photo coming, maybe) . Then I walked on to Buttes- Chaumont ( butte =hill) which is a big park, 25 hectares. I walked though it. The half of Paris who were not protesting were there walking/ jogging / picnicking  families, groups of friends, couples old and young. I was heading for another area of what were described as little houses, same as a few days ago.  Most of the land is covered with apartments, but these houses were usually 2 storeys high, often only 1 room in width and only 1 family ( going on the doorbell) Quite cute and interesting.  Another thing which I saw the other day as well was narrow streets called Villa such and such. I think villa such and such used to be a grand house with a big garden  but apartments were added with access from what we would call a laneway. So they each had a small garden,  and were sort of at right angles to the main street.  There were usually about 6 on each side of the lane way (villa).  Not sure if that makes any sense. A diagram would be better, but too hard now.

Then I stopped for lunch and walked back a different route.  The nice man over the road where I have been several times wasn't open earlier, but he now is so I might go and have a glass of wine and some salad. I think I can do better than rice crackers on my last day in France.

Sunday.

This morning, after a fair bit of walking I found a place for my morning coffee and croissant but it was too cold to sit outside. I walked around the area a bit, then came back here before going looking in a different direction for lunch. Most places I passed were only serving Sunday brunch. I.e. coffee, croissant, bread , juice and some sort of egg dish.  I didnot want another croissant nor an egg ,  I wanted meat or fish and veg. Sunday brunch was not a thing in Montpellier. Ah well. I gave up . There may have been somewhere, but I had walked far enough and I did get potatoes and avocado with my egg.. And I did get to sit outside in the almost sun.  The joys of travelling 

In the afternoon I caught the metro in and then walked to the church at  Saint Germain des Pres. I pottered around a bit, then listened to an hour long organ recital. I donot know much about organ music, but the people there seemed to think the organist was good, judging by their enthusiastic clapping.  2 works by Bach and 1 by Buxtehude. I just sat , feeling the music all around me. I read somewhere recently  that we should try to do something each day that ' nourishes our soul' .  I am not sure what my soul is, nor how to nourish it.  But maybe, I thought as I sat there, sitting in a beautiful place that makes me smile with nothing else to do other than listen to music  , that might come close.   After the recital I came back here. I was intending to stop somewhere and have a drink and a nibble or 2, but all the places I passed were too full, so I had rice crackers for dinner. When I am tired, manoeuvring myself into a spare seat in a fairly crowded cafe is too hard.

I have just emailed my travel agent. There will be lots of strikes in Paris tomorrow, May 1st. An article I read said the disruptions to the airports may continue to tuesday. I will be  worried until I get to Frankfurt. So I hope he can get me onto an earlier plane. If that gets cancelled,  I still have some hope of making the connection. 

A few random things. It is funny how the universe works sometimes. Several days ago I saw a sign over a smallish shop saying it was a cordonniere.  I was on the other side of the road , wondered what it did or sold  but did nothing about it. The following day I was ambling along, somewhere else,  saw a cordonniere , crossed  the road, peered into the window and saw that it was a shoe repair shop. Trouble is, the guy inside saw me peering in and beckoned me inside.  I said I was just looking in my very poor French. He  spoke much better English than my french. He asked the usual,  where are you from, I said Australia, he said Sydney or Canberra.  Someone who knew that Canberra was a place in Australia. He had been to Sydney and Alice Springs . He said Australians are very nice people but French people got angry and went on too many strikes. 

I was looking out my window  a few days ago at the slopey roofs with push out windows in them . I could not remember the name.   'hansard' came to mind but I knew it wasn't that. That night I was reading my book , a detective story set in Paris. She described the roof of the apartment over the road using the word mansard. Thats what I was trying to think of.  I am quite likely to be reading a detective story set in Paris  while I am in Paris, but for  me to read the word the next day??

Saturday. Butte aux Cailles and muddle

Today was muddled. I decided to have breakfast somewhere different, so went around some streets where  I knew there were lots of the French bistro/  corner bar places.  This was about 8.30. Noone else was around, As an aside, I have not heard any English in a 4 or so block radius. Plenty yesterday in the Marais..   Most of the bistros were also  closed. Then I finally found 1 who did not have croissants and gave me the wrong coffee. I didnot argue. So I went to a fancy patisserie, queued up, out the door,  and bought a croissant to have in my apartment.  Delicious. 

I had read 4 years ago about a neighbourhood Butte aux Cailles south of Place d'Italie in the 13th arrondissment. The article I read said it still had a village feel to it, but easy access to the rest of Paris. So I walked, caught a train, and walked to get there.  Again, no locals were wandering around, only other tourists. Other people must have had the same idea over the last few years because several of the menus in the nice looking cafes had English translations. Back to my apartment via a place for lunch. 

In the afternoon I went on a 2 hour boat trip . It was a smallish boat because it started in the Canal Saint Martin and then went into the Seine. I got there early and was able to get a seat in the front row.  It was a bit frustrating because the commentator always started in French, which I could sometimes half follow, then he would say the same thing in English, except  he would miss out bits in his English spiel. This happened repeatedly. Going along th canal was interesting. Sometime ago part of the canal was covered over, so we were going through a tunnel. We went through quite a few locks. A  bigger boat, like most of the tourist boats on the seine, would not have fitted. It was a bit blowy on the seine and I got wet and was freezing. I have been around boats for long enough to know better, but had left my rain jacket behind.  I took lots of pictures. In 2019, when I was here before, I made a point of taking pictures of all the 33 or 33 bridges across the Seine within  the periferique, but only from the land ( or another bridge) . Now I have more  photos. My previous ones are carefully labelled  and I will have to make time when I get home to sort these ones out before I forget.

Photos and some odds and ends tomorrow. Early to bed tonight

Friday. More walking

Today I walked by a circuitous route to the Musee Carnavalet, the museum of the history of Paris. This was closed when i was here in 2019.  I found it very interesting, but ran out of steam half way through. It had an excellent  map . It had an almost complete reconstructed canoe from pre historic times. I need to read the blurb in a photo of some  information to find roughly how prehistoric. Some of the old maps were interesting too. Lots of recreated rooms, paintings etc. Then I walked further and ended up near where I stayed before and had a nice lunch. Again I was asked in French if I want  a menu in English or French. Like the day before I replied in French that I would like a French one please. I suppose it is a good way of judging how much French I have, and so the waiter will know  from which menu i have when he takes my order. I was going to walk to a new department store that is a historic old one that has been rebuilt, but I walked back by another circuitous route. I am right near a hospital that i had read has a quiet central courtyard than anyone can sit in.  The article did say that is was hard to find. I walked all around the edge. The only entrance I could find had a sentry stopping people . I didnot think my French was up to it, besides, I was tired.

Later on I went to the bistrot over the road for a non- alcoholic cocktail and a small salad for dinner. Usually I just have rice crackers and dip or cheese. Have I said before  , maybe, but non alcoholic cocktails are good here. There are usually about 6 or 7 ordinary cocktails and 4 or 5 non alcoholic ones on a menu. An espresso coffee cost E1.50 to E2 depending where you are, a cafe creme larger coffee with milk  costs E3.50 to E4.50 depending and a non alcoholic  cocktail costs E 5 to E7 about. These are cheap to  middle of the road places.

I am going on a cruise on the Canal St Martin and the Seine tomorrow afternoon, so I am not sure if this will get done tomorrow. 

Thursday Still no list but more walking

I had some Canberra admin to do this morning which meant I was not in the least bit interested in sitting inside and deciding what i wanted to do for the next few days. I just thought roughly of my route and set off. I am staying in  the western part of Belleville. I have heard it described as the most ethnically diverse part of Central Paris. It used to be one of the poorest. I had a coffee in one of the new coffee shops that were appearing when I was here in 2019. There are lots more now, that is if this area is anything to go by. But I have the same whinge. They only seem to serve banana or carrot cake and a few biscuits. Not French delicacies. They are also expensive. This area, around me  is obviously not as poor as it used to be. There are quite a few new apartment blocks. There are fancy wine shops, flower shops, bread shops with things with different grains, coffee shops, restaurants, not many clothes shops.  I stopped for coffee in a new place combined with a cycling shop. As I got further east I went through a north African area,  based on the food shops mainly.  Then as I was getting nearer to Belleville Park there were a few quite busy small restaurants. I was quite pleased with myself. I passed one which looked nice but was 3/4 full. In the past i have not been comfortable going into almost full places. I walked on, but saw nothing for  a few blocks, so rather than go on and get hungry  and make poor decisions ,  I went back. There was a seat at the bar which faced the street, not into the restaurant.  The lady was lovely. She asked , in French, if I would like her to talk to me in  English. I said  in French, slowly in French please. There were about 6 tables outside and 10 inside. I am fairly sure that there was no choice.  She told me the menu of the day and I agreed to it,  but I think everyone had the same.  The 3 courses were not big but all delicious and cheap.

I walked on, through the park and kept going  eastwards and upwards. It is quite hilly. I have read a series of detective books based in Paris. Each one is in a particular area. I am almost finished rereading the one set in Belleville. The author  mentions an area near the highest part where there are individual houses.  There are about 10 townhouses , 2 or sometimes 3 stories high, not like the surrounding apartment blocks. Then I caught the metro back.

Over the past few days I have seen that  bicycle riders and drivers of shiny black cars with opaque windows think that they are not obliged to obey stop signs, red traffic lights, one way streets or pedestrian only streets. 

If you stand on the 10inch wide balcony off my lounge room and turn 90 degrees sideways you can see over the road a sporting complex and , in the distance about 1/3 from the left hand side,  a spire. That is the Eiffel Tower, apparently.  Not the tall , closer spire on the right.

Wednesday in Paris

Normally the first thing I do when I arrive in a place ( or before) is make a list of things I would be disappointed to miss, things that I would like to see, and lesser things that I would be interested in but maybe less so. This time i have assorted scraps of paper with places and ideas jotted down. And , of course, I have the excel table I drew up before my trip in 2019 that has lots of places, which category ( museum, church, quite place, good coffee, etc) which arrondisysment etc ,  . This morning it was all too hard  so I just went for breakfast over the road where i had dinner last night. I was recognised. One of the 2 guys speaks quite good English but is happy to wait for my hesitant French and gently correct it.  I then went to the nearest metro station to get a transport pass thing which you load with different tickets. One of the definites to see was the Museum of Modern Art, so I set off . I had to get a map of the subway  to find out the end of the line i wanted . I cannot go down into the underground, follow signs for the relevant train line, round a few bends and know which direction I want to head in. 

I got to the museum but realised I needed more food. Normally I go out for my coffee and croissant and orange juice but have another piece of fruit and some yoghurt at home.  I forgot this morning. I was in an expensive area but thought to myself ' too bad'. Previously I would have looked a bit more around for somewhere that looked cheaper. I just marched in and asked for what I wanted. As it turned out, it was an average price. The museum was interesting. Some rooms of the more modern stuff I didnot understand at all but others I enjoyed. I did see a painting by a guy ,Robert Delaunay, whose work I   had seen in Montpellier,  of the Eiffel tower that made me smile. I bought a postcard of it to sit next to the postcard size picture of Georgia Okeefe's painting of Manhattan that I have.  I am sure nobody's interested in these details. Too bad.

Then I went outside and took a selfie just to prove I am here, deliberately unidentifiable.  Another thing to must  do  that would be on my yet to done list was visit the Saint Germain des Pres ( no accents, too hard on my tablet) .  It was about 4km I think.  But soon after i crossed the bridge to the left bank I went past the Russian Orthodox Church. I had been there last year. This time there was crime scene tape ropping off large parts of it ( there are several buildings associated with the church) and it had clearly been there a while. I felt so sorry for the Russian community who worship there that they were attacked because of 1 maniac.

It was lunch time,  I was still walking in the direction of the church.  I passed lots of restaurants. Initially I disregarded anything that was not French and also anthing that had English translations on the menu.  ( I was in the 7th approaching the 6th)  I was getting hungry so I stopped at an Italian restaurant and ha1d a lovely seafood risotto and an apple tart.  Delicious. One of my purposes in going  to Saint Germain des Pres was to see if there were any music recitals  while I was there.( I went to about 4 last time) They are often free, though they do encourage you to leave a parting donation. On the board just inside the church said that a group was playing Vivaldi's 4 seasons plus a few jthings on Sunday but at 8.30pm. I went in and just smiled. See photos below. I love the colours and the fact that it is coloured.  I sat for ages,  took a few photos. I decided that a concert that started at 8.30 was too late. I went outside and on a bigger different board was an advert for an organ recital ( better than strings for me) was on on Sunday afternoon.  How good will that be!  I must find out if I need a ticket.

I walked more, got a train and walked. I sat outside  and had a hot chocolate.  The 2 guys in the bistrot introduced me to one of the locals who was standing at the bar. He had just walked from montparnase railway station. That led to me telling them I had been to all of the 20 arrondissments in 2019.

Tuesday, Arrived in Paris

My changes to my first train trip went OK this morning. Noone checked my ticket,  My 3 hour wait in a newish  train terminal went OK apart from the coughing fit i had. A nearby couple tried to help. They left a little later but she came back and insisted on giving me some of their lollies to suck if I needed them. That was thoughtful. I spent most of the 3 hours on the train to Paris looking out the window at the pretty patterns of vineyards often separated by windbreaks, rows  and columns of crops, more windbreaks, backyards of village houses, the uniformity of most of the houses in most of the villages, fruit trees, the bright yellow fields of canola ( I assume). I must look up to see why there is a lychee Ernest Hemingway in Nimes.

The  check in arrangements all went smoothly. Jean Pierre, the owner met me as arranged here. The apartment is small but nice. His stuff is in the cupboards, except for space that has been made for visitors  and some nice minimal decorations, far more to my taste  than those in the previous place. It is in an apartment building  built in 1906. .  An intesting small triangular lift has been put into the middle of what would have been a largish spiral staircase in the middle of the apartments. There is still a staircase, not just as wide. The lift would hold 3 of me and nothing much more. It reminds me of a lift in a place I was in once in italy. It had been fitted into the inside of a wall. It held 3 people, but standing shoulder to shoulder and , from memory,  not heaps bigger than me.

I walked around a couple of block and then had some dinner . I had a win. I ordered a chicken dish. He asked what I wanted with it,  potatoes this, potatoes that, rice , fries? I hesitated, desperately trying to remember the word on menus for vegetables ( it does not include potatoes)  legumes!. Ah legumes, he grinned and walked away. I thought ' I hope it was right, I donot want chickpeas and beans and lentils'. I was right. 

Tomorrow is forecast to be 9 degrees at 8am. Thank you Uniqlo for my leggings.

Last day in Montpellier

I had a win this morning. Quite early , about the time I will leave tomorrow, I walked to the tram stop to see how many people were on the tram. A lady came up to me and in rapid French asked a question. I replied slowly in poor French could she please repeat the question slowly. Ah pardon she says and looks around for some else  to ask. Trouble for her was everyone else was under 20 wearing headphones, so she turned back to me and very slowly asked her question which I replied to.  That particular tram does a loop and unless you look very very closely at the diagram you cannot tell which way round the loop and, as it turned out, she was going to the same station I was. She asked how long I had been here for,  clearly not knowing whether I was right or not. We chatted on, the tram came and I could see her relax once the diagram came up on the screen and she could see I was right. She was running late for her train.

I had breakfast sitting in a cafe near the station. I was inside but with a large glass window in front of me. The tram line went very close to the fairly narrow pavement. It took up all of my window, so when a tram went past, all I could see was tram. Trouble was, each time a tram came past from left to right,  I thought my world was moving from right to left. It is hard to explain, it was a very weird sensation and made me vaguely nauseous,. Sitting in a cafe minding my own business.  

I walked back to my apartment a long way round. Direct route is 1.3km, I walked 5km.

As an aside. I love  Sundays in old European cities - all the church bells ringing at assorted times through the day, and usually more than I church. There are several churches that I can hear., one is the main cathedral which i went to earlier  , the other, I was fairly sure, was Saint Therese. So I thought I would go along and see what it was like and say 'thank you'.  I had not got around to looking it up on Google. 

It was built in the 1930's , has a long skinny tower (which I knew because I can see it from the Peyrou) and inside it is decorated in the Byzantine tradition with quite modern intricate stained glass and mosaics. It is well used with lots of services weekly.

I had a lovely 3 course  lunch at my friendly place 2 doors away.  They knew it was my last lunch there. At one stage Stephan took my glass away and indicated he would top it up on the house. No, no, Thank you. It  was already a generous serve.  My profiteroles came out of the kitchen and there were 3, despite the menu saying there were 2 in a serve. I cannot remember what I said exactly,  something about who cannot count? Stephan had asked the chef to give me 3.  I use my debit card everywhere and donot tip. I had planned to have cash this time so I could leave a significant tip. Just as well. I made it clear I had planned to leave the extra, I wasn't paying for the profiterole.

The rest of the day has been routine.

Saturday St Guilhem le Desert and Sunday

On Saturday about 8am ish I walked through the town to the start of several walks.  About 10 minutes. I  saw noone except 2 locals. I want to know if all the serious walkers leave early or wait and get food and leave later. What about summer.?  Whatever, I had a lovely time, walking up a reasonably steep path to a ridge line , then along a little and back down.  The photo is taken on the way up, looking back down the gorge toward St G. , the collection of roofs you can see. I was a bit over my allocated time but the views were wonderful. I feel oK, but am still coughing intermittently and often at night. I am trying to learn to be sensible.

It was 9.20ish  when i got back. I found 1 place where i could get a cup of coffee, but not a croissant, so I drank my coffee, then I found a croissant in the Tabac and wandered around eating it, looking at all the other eating places ( about 4) of which 2 were vaguely thinking of opening.  I went back to the place I was staying, sorted myself out slowly, read a bit, then returned the key, got a sandwich and walked to the busstop to wait for the return bus. I was eating the sandwich as another bus pulled up. Not the one I was waiting for, but the driver still came and told that the bus i wanted was often up to 15  minutes late. She knew because she often drives the route and apparently there are road works. I was pleased to know because if I had not known I might have started to wonder what to do because the next bus was 4 hours later.  As an aside, I am a bit surprised that the 4 days trips and this overnight one have all taken more energy than I was expecting. Looking up the timetable, working out when to leave, where there might be a loo, was there a fallback option if the tram or bus didnot come ( they could have called another strike and i might not know) . But it was 4 years ago I was  in Paris and that was easy in comparison so it was more than 4 years ago that I did anything like this. Surprisingly i am 4 years older than I was 4 years ago, so maybe I am being hard on myself. Stop smirking S.S. 

On the return bus trip I had to change buses and got talking to a lady from US , K. ( I avoid naming people because anyone can read this and I donot have permission etc etc, so it is easiest to have a blanket rule.) She had been in Italy for a conference and was pottering around France house sitting. We got on well, held similar views on lots of things, were interested in similar things  and enjoyed talking to each other despite the 2 decade ish  age difference. She was on her way to the main railway station in Montpellier to collect a hire car. We got off the tram at my stop,, dumped my bag in my apartment  ( where there is a loo- it really is quite difficult sometimes), caught another tram to Gare Saint Roch, I waiting while she dealt with the hire car, which she could leave in the parking station, we walked to a place where I was fairly sure we could get food at 3.30 ish, then we walked a long way round through the narrow twisty winding streets of part of the old town looking in windows. It was about 5.30 i think when we parted company. K had to drive back to where she was staying about 30min out of montpellier, I got the tram back to my apartment. 

Today i had a slow start. I have come to the conclusion that I am allergic to something in this apartment. There is  wall hanging made of crocheted wool in hoops joined together instead of a bed head. I wonder if it is full of dust. I slept part of the night in my bed and then moved to the lounge at 2 am I was coughing so much. I am  usually much better when I am out and about, but the night time effect takes  a while sometimes to wear off. I forgot that and went to the hotel where I sometimes have breakfast with the people who stay there.  T hey pay 2 to 3 hundred euro more than me a night. So  they do not want to be disturbed in the fairly small breakfast room by some coughing. I had an embarrassing situation of really bad coughing, I left my bag and phone and went out into the foyer area, had tears and i think snot streaming down my face, couldnot

 stop coughing. The poor lady at the desk got me some water which helped  a bit and I finally stopped. I donot think that has ever happened before to me in public as bad as that.  After that I went back to my breakfast and ate it very slowly.  A NZ couple came in and I  talked to them for  while. On my way back to my apartment I stopped and looked at  the Brocante stalls that set up ner me on Sunday mornings. I am not sure of the direct translation. It is sometimes translated as trash and treasure,  but it is different. It is all old, but stuff is nicely displayed, each stall has only a couple of tables and wandering round is plesant. Maybe it is just that I am on holiday. 

Tomorrow I pack up ready for an early start on Tuesday.

               Looking down towards St Guilhem le Desert 

Looking  up the gorge away from  St Guilhem le Desert

Thursday Apology and Backlog

It is now Saturday night. I have not been electrocuted in the bath nor run over by a tram, you would probably have heard about that by now. On Thursday  I felt decidedly off, I was coughing a lot and decided to do as little as possible all day. This meant spending more time than normal at my morning cafe and lunch, more time reading, some time ( but not enough ) sorting photos and I remembered I had not written anything in this space at 8.30pm, my time to go to bed, so,i thought " too bad".

On Friday  I went to the last of the 6 cafes that were recommended to me as having decent coffee ( by Australian standards). Several of the others have been run by English speakers and the staff are quick to use English, even when you are trying to use French. This one was different. As I was leaving I thanked the waiter for talking slowly to me in French  as soon as she realised I was not a normal French speaker.  I had said in French when I walked in that I would like to have breakfast and inside ( most of their tables are outside) From then on, she spoke slowly and I could understand and respond appropriately. As I was thanking her ( she was also patient while I spoke very slowly sometimes) the , I presume , owner came out from the back and  told me on Tueday evenings they have a 'come along and talk french' gathering. Wish I had. known sooner. It might have got me out at night.

Then I caught the tram to Mosson then bus to Saint guilhem le Desert. One of the 'delights' of travelling -  i had been watching and the bus driver was only stopping if the stop had been requested ( a sign in the front of the bus lit up) like normal city buses. Or if there was somebody waiting. Some little townships she drove straight through. OK, I can follow on Google to see where I am, but I could not , despite trying very hard, see the button to press to request the stop. So i had to ask . Not so hard really, just another bit of energy gone.

Saint Guilhem is a picturesque medieval village built in one of the many steep gorges of the  area. In 806 St guilhem established a monastery there. Apparently  a part of the cloister of the monastery was moved to the Cloisters museum in New York City. I have been to this museum, so I may have seen it. About all I remember about that particular museum was that I didnot enjoy it. Old cloisters are one of my favourite things to seek out when I am travelling . I find them very peaceful and comforting and calming. Not so the museum. My memory is that it was overcrowded and disorganised, but maybe I was not having a good day and just wasn't getting the peaceful vibes I was hoping for. Or maybe  I was expecting too much. After all, a current, well used church has a completely different feel to a church that is only a museum

Back to St Guilhem. There is only 1 space large enough and flat enough  for a square surrounded by shops, cafes and houses. So after wandering around i sat there for a while having a late lunch (3 ish) of a galette ( buckwheat crepe, usually , in this part of the world, savoury) and then a hot chocolate before going to the apartment i had booked for the night.  I have used booking.com on many occasions for hotels, but this is the first time for a single dwelling. There was a breakdown in communication which meant I spent an hour sitting on a stone step and then time on the phone and walking back to where i had lunch to collect the key and then getting in. Their mistake, but I could have confirmed the arrangement and the error would have shown up. It was advertised as a gite which may mean different rules apply so i cannot complain too much, but I was seriously displeased to then have to make my own bed!  Queen size Doona cover included.  Added to the annoyance of the day, it was 5.30, I wanted to have a shower and put my pjs on but knew I should have food first . I was carrying some emergency supplies ( if you call 4 rice crackers spread with hummus 7 hours before  so very soggy food)  because my purpose in coming to St gG was to walk in this terrain . I had realised from walking around I was not going to get any food in this town until 9 am so knew i should keep my emergency rations for the next morning, so therefor knew I had to eat then, early evening.   I had seen a place that advertised tapas and it was a  bar rather than a restaurant so I thought I should be able to get something.  I went in , sat down, asked for the menu, go the reply " we are only doing crepes until 6.30".  Bother. I looked at the menu, saw that they had 1 savoury galette  and they did have a soup on both the lunch and dinner menu. i tried hard for the soup, but they were not budging. Nothing wrong with a savoury galette  2 meals 2 1/2 hours apart, i tried tompersude myself . Besides I dont have to eat it all.

So, at the end of the day, I was definitely  not in the right frame of mind to write here.

I slept very well till I woke up hot and sweaty. The mattress protector had a plastic backing. One of my pet dislikes.

Today has gone well. In one sentence, I walked 40 minutes up, 5 minutes along,  then 35 minutes down,  amazing scenery, had some breakfast,  caught the bus back, met a lovely lady from Colorado  and spent the rest of the day with her. Photos of St G and more info tomorrow. 

Wednesday, mainly nothing

Yesterday afternoon I booked a hotel for the night on Friday at St Guilhem le Desert. It is about 45 km NW of Montpelier. I catch a tram, then 2 buses. It is an old town in the mountains with some good walks.. I will wander around the town in the afternoon, go to the weekly market on Saturday morning and then do a walk. At least that was the plan yesterday. But I woke up feeling a bit sick, achy, cough. So today i did as little as possible. I went to a different place for coffee that had been recomended and then walked to the modern art museum that was closed last Wednesday.  It was vaguely interesting. Many of the paintings and sculptures looked liked Albert Tuckers tortured souls. Lots of the paintings i am sure could have been painted by one of my grandchildren, the one who is good at art.

Then lunch and reading in the afternoon.

I still plan on going on Friday,  but I will see tomorrow. I donot have to do any walking.

Tuesday 18th

This is my last full Tuesday here in Montpellier. Time flies.

This morning I went by tram to a place , Place d'Europe, just east of the old town. In my first week here I walked upstream along the river ( to use the term loosely, more like a ditch in places) Lez. Today I walked downstream for about 4 km to Lattes. There was  good path along the river. Very quickly I got out of suburbia ( European style, nothing like Australian suburbia) to minor industrial , then just fields. Then back into a created place. They must have artificially widened the river  and made a basin with 4 to 6  storey blocks  of apartments. Playgrounds, cafes, boat mooring berths. A good place to sit and think about nothing over morning tea. The end of 1 of the tram lines was about a kilometre away. 

The 2 waiters at the restaurant nearest me are getting to know me.  When i passed  on my way back from the tram 1 of the waiters was out the front talking to someone.  I said without thinking, Buongiorno. Ah, no, Bonjour. He said to the other person " She comes from australia and she uses lots of italian words." Said in  tone "don't mind her , she's a bit odd because she comes from .....".   Ah well.  After I'd taken my hat and jacket up to my apartment  i went into the restaurant  and  accidentally  banged the glass door.  The other guy came over and said loudly, in French, Oh,  it's broken ! I just grinned at him. It clearly wasn't broken. 

Later in the afternoon I walked to the botanic Gardens near me. i pottered round about half of it and decided I would rather be sitting in the shade on my balcony reading my book. 12km was enough walking for the day.

Monday 17th

This morning I put all my clothes on ( not quite, but enough layers to keep warm)  and went to have my petit dejeuner sitting outside at a brasserie and  watched the locals pass by. This place, where i have been several times before, is about 4 blocks south of here. The take away shops nearby are predominantly middle eastern.  There is a greater ethnic mix than at the little group of eateries near me.  I came back, pottered,  read about other nearby towns, then went to buy some lunch.  There is a place in the little group near me  run by one man ( he cooks and serves)  that seats about 10 inside and 4 outside. I have eaten there before and it is delicious. He only has 4 mains (obviously very carefully chosen and partly pre cooked) on the menu and 3 deserts. He does the food take away as well. When i got there it was half full but the other tables were reserved, but he could do take away, so I had my very tasty lunch on my little balcony in the sun. I went out again  to the bar near me in the afternoon for a coffee. They also have a sign out about their food, but I have never actually seen anyone eat there. I will not eat there on principle.  What sort of bar has  no croissants to serve at breakfast time.?  I found this out my first morning and have not been back since. 

I am not really fixated on food, it just sounds that way.  I hope I am not still coughing tomorrow.

Saturday 15th Another easy day

This morning I decided another easy day would be best. There was a weather warning for extremely high winds. I went looking for a secluded place for my morning breakfast. Some of the narrow streets with several storeys either side act like wind tunnels, funnelling the wind into the open places. I found a place where my coffee was relatively safe. I  walked back along yet more unexplored back alleyways and stopped at the markets near me for some fruit and some prepared food.

After a nice lunch here I went out again. The wind was really fierce and I was getting grit in my eyes. Near me is the Jardin des Plantes, a botanical garden established in the medieval ages in conjunction with the school of medicine. The close association continues. I  have walked through a few times, but not stopped and looked at the plants reading the brochure about them. However it was closed because of the 'violent winds' according to the notice. Nevermind, I knew of a nice place for afternoon tea nearby. Trouble is so did many others. Nevermind, I will wander the back streets and I am sure I will find somewhere else. Sure enough i had coffee sitting outside in a place with very few other people. But the wind made it vaguely unpleasant, so I did not last long.

I forgot. I should have been taking more careful note of the toilets associated with some of the places I have gone to. After yesterday's effort of the scary tiny spiral staircase, today's staircase to the floor above was OK, but I think the whole floor had been added  below the one above because I could not stand up in it without banging my head. 

Friday 14th

Last night I went to bed coughing. This morning I woke up coughing. So I thought , initially, 'woe is me, sick when I am away on my own'. Or similar. Then I read lots of emails and texts from friends who had remembered it was my birthday and I felt a whole lot better. I had half planned to go to Sete , a town 30 min on the train away, but thought no, I will just potter around here and have my special seafood lunch tomorrow, if Ifeel better. 

I tried a different place for my morning petit dejeuner. On my way there i was walking down a narrow street with no one else on it.  Along came 6 very heavily armed young men in some sort of uniform. They were looking left, right, down each side street all the time. I hope they were practising. But back to breakfast.  There is a fairly standard formula of 1 coffee, 1 croissant and 1 glass of orange juice for E6.to E7.50 ,,depending where. Often you get some breadstick and butter and jam as well. This place was nice inside but had a downstairs toilet that anyone larger , either width or height, or with bigger feet,  than me  would have found impossible. It was narrow and circular and scary. I was sort of clinging to the outside wall and watching very carefully where each foot went.

Then I went to an area a bit north of the old centre to look at a modern art place, but it was closed,  despite me being there within the correct time frame. Never mind I walked back along a different road.  I donot like shopping for clothes when I am away and usually avoid it.  I may have mentioned before  that despite me looking carefully , before i came, at the Max and min temperatures in Montpellier at this time of year I got it wrong ( or it is unseasonally cold)  and left my thermal leggings behind. Each time I go out in the morning I am cold. So today, I thought , I am supposedly a grown up person, old enough to manage buying a simple pair of leggings. So I went into uniqlo and bought a pair of leggings. They have a funny system (?I donot know if it in uniqlo shops in australia) but you put what you are buying into this big sort of bin thing. There must be sensors all around the inside of the bin because it just brings up the item on the screen. Needless to say i had not looked at the very clear instructions on the wall in front of me and was wondering where to wave the tag. Someone quickly rescued me.

I was thinking of a few different options to have a nice lunch but decided what i wanted most was a gallette from the  local shop. Coughing in the local shop would be less conspicuous  and easier

 to get outside if I had to. It was delicious.  I did have a piece of cake too.

Since then I have been pottering.  Reading- I am currently  reading a tale.of 2 cities - fancy reading Dickens for pleasure  and brene brown's Altas of the heart. Very interesting. But I don't read Brene's book at cafes . 

Tomorrow I will  go to Sete, probably.

thursday

I did very little this morning other than go out for a morning coffee and some lunch. I bought  my 

Lunch from a nearby butcher/ small goods shop. There was a long queue. The staff were efficient but also talking to the regulars about what they were making, how many for etc etc. They had prepared food that you just heat up, which I got. I was fully occupied while I was waiting trying to understand the conversations ( others in the queue occasionally  put their cooking tips forward), alternatively looking up what sort of birds  the many on offer were. I thought the Guinea fowl with their long  black necks and beaks still attached were most repulsive. 

There were 2 churches I wanted to see and I walked to  them in the afternoon. 

I forgot. On my way to get some breakfast I was minding my own business walking along a narrow street, then behind me I heard sirens. I moved right off the road.but there was not much space between the wall and the cars with me in between. There were 16 white police vehicles (paddy wagon size) all the same, all with their sirens on and lights  flashing. All with between 2 and 5 passengers I get the first one has to have flashing lights and noise,  but why the rest of them? They all had the same police national security sign on them.

Wednesday

Another day of pottering .

After a leisurely start and a leisurely breakfast I went by tram to the train station  because I thought I would change my train  booking  for my trip to Paris at the end of my 4 weeks here. Trouble was there was a huge queue. I got talking to a lovely lady from Idaho who was with her husband and another couple. After ages waitingmimdecided to give up, I would stick with the original plan.  So , with the aid of my app, I walked back to my apartment by a very circuitous route along streets I had not been before. 

Avid readers may remember my surprise when I saw  that hookahs were not  allowed on the beach at Palavas.  One advantage of wandering back streets is that you never know what you may find . See evidence below of a shop in Montpellier selling various hookahs.  Nex to it was a Lebanese restaurant and next to that was a Hookah lounge. 

There are 3 types of bollards in the streets of Montpellier. Firstly  there are the concrete ones that are fixed that completely block a road from cars passing through, but not usually bicycles or motorcycles. They are easy to manage. Secondly are the ones that you see walking down a street blocking it, you think there cannot be any cars behind you because they cannot get through, then all of a sudden, there is an impatient  car behind you and the bollards are disappearing into the ground,. Thirdly, and these are equally disconcerting, you see cars moving up and down the street, you know to be careful and move out of the way of a passing car, then almost fall over because the ground moves under a foot as a bollard appears out of the ground. 

I enjoyed another nice plat du jour at the local restaurant  for lunch. 

Tuesday Camargue tour

It is now Wednesday. Yesterday was long and tiring but very enjoyable as well.

It is difficult getting the timing right when multiple modes of transport are involved ( and, in my old age, i have become more risk averse than I used to be, and less confident that public transport will run to schedule. ) I started early , walked to the correct tram stop and caught a tram to the other side of the central area of Montpellier.  This always involves carefully thought - which side of the platform to wait on because the trams are on the wrong side of the road and do you want to go clockwise or anticlockwise. Then, because of the tram network's modifications, I had to queue ( not really, just a disorderly mass) for a shuttle bus ( I refuse to use the word navette) . Luckily I was in the right place, just near an opening door, but that was luck. Not all of the mass of people got on.  I knew I wanted to go the end of the line which on my map was labelled as Place de France.. On the bus it said the bus was going to Odysseum. The next bus went from Place de France.  Thanks to Google I found that they were quite near. When the bus driver stopped he indicated that Place de France was a nearby street. Every other ' place'  in Montpellier has indicated some vacant land with people . All I could see was car parks. Anyway, I found the next bus stop, had enough time to find some coffee and food, then got on the bus for Le Grau de Roi, another seaside town similar to Palavas but where the tour I was booked on left from. An hour later I got to le Grau du Roi, had plenty of time to wander around and then had a nice lunch and went back to the bus stop to be picked up by someone from the tour. All went smoothly in the end, but there was uncertainty at every step. Am I in the right spot? Will the bus come? What if it doesn't,  will the next bus get me there in time?   I am finding these thoughts are more prevalent than they used to be and more tiring.

So the tour. There was the driver and guide, Sophia, 2 French people who spoke reasonable English, and a family of 4 mum ( french) , dad ( us) and 2 almost teenagers who spoke both and the 4  lived in London. Most of the time the guide spoke in French and then translated for me, sometimes she started with English. The hard part for me was that often I could partly understand her French. It would have been less tiring to ignore the French rather than listen to the French,  listen to the English and compare and think, Oh, that is what such and such means. So I was inadvertently trying to learn about the language and the Camargue at the same time. Tiring.

The Camargue is an area of ??  Characterised  by very flat  land , etungs ie lakes ( Sophia was using the English word swamp. I , politely , said they were not swamps. I described swamps. Luckily  the French lady backed me up), lots of canals, flamingos , fruit and veg  ( we saw asparagus, lots of grape, vines, rice fields ( the rice from here is red, thin, long grains, nutty, delicious . I have tried it)  lots of fruit trees) , the distinctive Camargue white horses, bit smaller than normal,  foals are born brownish, then turn greyish at 2 and white at 3ish or the other way around., the distinctive Camargue bulls  - different to Spanish bulls , their horns go upwards  up not forwards, and smaller .,  Large homesteads with attached wine tasting and accomodation.  We got to taste some of the wines and food of the area.

Sophia dropped me at the bus stop at 6.15 for the 6.30 bus back to montpellier . The next one, the last of the day , went at 7.30.  The 6.30 bus arrived, but it was not until 8.30 that I walked in my front door. That time included a 10 min diversion to get some prepared salad for dinner. So no blog last night.

Monday

Today I did very little of interest. I walked a long way round to a place for breakfast,  a different long way back to my apartment,  swept the floor, hung the washing out, read, planned my route for tomorrow.

Another word. Navette. If I was asked what that means I would immediately guess   a small boat. Not so. It is a shuttle bus. To continue another theme, a navette spatiale is a spaceship, according to my dictionary.

So tomorrow I will be catching a tram, walking a bit, catching a navette,  (the tram system is disrupted with some stations offline. Building works, not strikes)  then a bus to a town along the coast called Le Grau de Roi. Then i have to find some food, then someone from the tour company will, hopefully,  meet me at the bus stop, then i do a tour of the Camargue in a safari sort of truck. Hopefully in English. It was quite hard to find a tour who would accept a booking of 1 person. As if it's not hard enough!

Another advantage of my new App . A few days ago I saw a nice cafe in an out of the way place, a sort of bend in a car-less road ( too narrow) . I could not remember exactly where it was.  So today I brought up the route I had taken and followed it in reverse. An excllent lunch with an excellent view of the passing people . I was very strong and passed on dessert. From when I left here to when I got back was 3 hours. A long lunch.

Easter Sunday

I went to sleep last night with a plan for today, but just about everything changed. But that  is perfectly OK, on a holiday, just not normal for me.

Normally I speak to Noel at 7am my time, but we had arranged to be an hour later because he was going to Easter lunch at Wendys, never a short event. Instead of waiting till after i talked to him for my breakfast coffee and croissant as planned, I went earlier and had more than just coffee and croissant. After I talked to him I had planned to go to the Cathedral for their Easter service, mainly just to hear the organ, assuming that it would be used. But instead I pottered at the markets that are very near me on Sunday morning. Mostly old stuff,  some interesting stuff.  Then I went to the tourist office, yet again. On Tuesday afternoon I am going on a tour of the camargue which starts at a nearby town. I will have to catch a tram, then a shuttle bus, then a bus to the town. It was going to then be a 3km walk along a road that I didnot know what the verge was like.  So I had decided to ask if the company would pick me up from the bus stop. My French is not up to that, particularly over the phone, harder than face to face.  The tourist office had booked the tour so I thought they would ring up for me, which they did and the tour company will. Good outcome - assuming it works on Tuesday.

Next an encounter with a spaceship which didnot function as it should, luckily after the previous person and before me.  I was very  pleased when I was released.

They  tourist office in Montpellier  is on the edge of the main Place de la Comedie. There are many restaurants surrounding it. I chose one  that had a seat in the shade in the 4th of 5 rows from outside  to inside. So I was deliberately not in the first or second row with the best view of the comings and goings , they were in the sun. I found it a good seat, because I could watch the excellent staff and had a reasonable  view of most of the place activity without being at all visible to anyone. Except the staff.

Earlier in the day I was walking down a narrow street that cars donot normally use. 2 cars came past with VIGIPIRATE signs on them . Each car had driver plus 3 people all in camouflage gear, none skinny and little. They had to go slowly  so I could easily look. Vigipirates?? I saw no eye patches. Vigilant pirates? While I was sitting watching the world go past at lunch time i looked the word up. Sure enough Vigipirate is one of the French government 's anti terrorism tools. I had to read a fair way till i got to

 VIGI lance and

 P rotections of

I nstillations against the 

R isk of

A ttacks by

T errorists with

E xplosives

Did they not have any English speaker who thought it a bit odd? Or did they not care? 

On a completely different topic but probably equally  boring thing to tell you about  -  when I was in Sydney for a week 2 years ago I used an App called Mytrack, which enabled me to ,eg,  track my walk from  place A to place  B  and then the next day track say from palce A to place C, then the next day I could overlay the previous 2 tracks and thus see where I have been and choose different streets to go down.  I found this very good for exploring the area around me rather than have to remember where I had been. I tried to use it again in brisbane a year later but I was told that I had used the first month or maybe year and I had to pay. I am very stingy when it comes to paying for apps. So forgot about it. For the first week and a bit here I have been recording where I have been on a hard copy map and sort of remembering where I have been,

. Trouble is about 5 days ago most of the shops changed their window  displays and I was completely confused.  I remembered the app. So I paid the grand total of 15 AUD for a years fun.  I need to spend some time working out how to use more features of it. Eg. I think i can link it to my camera so it will pin point  on a map where I took a photo from. Maybe that will be later, but before my next trip.

Saturday. Rest of Palavas

Strictly speaking the place is Palavas des Flots, but I have not heard anybody call it that. 

Palavas looks, on the map, like lots of other places along the coast. Land mass, then what looks like lakes with bits of land connecting them and some outlets to the sea and then the Mediterranean sea.  What i describe as lakes are called etangs. But my dictionary translates etangs as ponds. Largest  ponds I've ever seen. The town itself is centred around a canal coming in from the sea lined with fishing boats and cafes for tourists, but when I was there I listened hard for something other than French and could not hear anything. Then it sprawls out, with a bus stop that is a fair way. 

I walked along the coast from Palavas for about 5 km along a strip of land about  100m wide on average. Some of it had a thin strip of apartments on the beach side and all it had low scrub or nothing on the etang side. There was an interesting sign  on the beach. No dogs. No nuisance noises, Correct attire, No kicking ball games. All loosely translated. And then 'narguile interdit'. I knew interdit means forbidden but narguile is a hookah, according to my dictionary and to the little diagram on the sign. I donot know where the hookah smokers are, but I have not seen any likely candidates, except possibly on 1 of the trams I went on. Certainly not in Palavas. The instruction that said ' correct attire' I thought very misleading.  Several 100m past the sign I saw a couple who completely disregarded it, They had on no attire at all.

I after a very pleasant walk I got to Maguelone on an island in the middle of the etung. On Maguelone there is an old Romanesque cathedral.There was an old Roman port, then a church. It was the head of the diocese in the 11th century for a while. Now there are a few other buildings . An organisation runs the place, including some vineyards, cafe, organic gardens and gives employment to people who would find it difficult in the mainstream workforce. 

According to my map and walking notes from a friend's book, you can get from this island to another thin strip  of land that runs back to Palavas but a bit inland from the one I first walked on. Somebody had locked the gate. No one else was around, I was not prepared to retrace my steps, I am used to chambering over rocks and squeezing through tiny spaces between bushes ( thanks ot my orienteering), so I went a slightly unconventional way around the gate.  I walked back the 5 or so km to Palavas  and looked for somewhere to have lunch. Bit tricky because most of the places only had outdoor seating in the sun. i was wearing a hat when walking, but still, I had had enough sun. I found a place which was relatively quiet and had a small table in the shade. But it was a bit Faulty Towersish. There was a small menu outside which was OK. But they had no printed menu. He showed it to me on his phone. Then I asked to see the drinks list. There were some mixed drinks, then it did say 'vins  E4 ' ( nice wine is relatively cheap here) . No particular wine was specified, so i asked in passable French  ( I have been practising, I have my priorities right) for a glass of dry white wine. He went away and came back with a glass of a few mouthfuls of a white for me to taste. I have no idea what it was but it was too sweet, so I asked for a red, any red, I didnot care. He went away and came back to say he was very sorry but they could not find any red. Hmm. I settled on water. The fish was very nice as was the coconut and raspberry tart. I went inside and saw that it was still in an unfinished state. There was no way to lock the loo door.  So that was the problem, they had only just , too soon, opened.

I wandered around after lunch, sat on some rocks on a  breakwater watching kids playing on the sand and  5 people rigging 3 catamarans. 

Then I had to walk back to catch the bus back to montpellier, then the tram back to my apartment .  I was feeling a bit off in  the tram and wondered if i had eaten something a bit off, then I  looked at my watch ( it is smart) and realised I had walked 18km .  I know that feeling I get when I need food and water and soon. ( 1 croissant and 1 coffee is not enough to walk 18km on)  I was carrying water, but I am not keen on spaceships, so forgot about it. . ( If you think i am going mad, my  ramblings sometimes only make sense when read sequentially)   So i stopped at the supermarket on the way back to my apartment. And ate and drank for the rest of the day.

Saturday 8th April Palavas

Walk to tram stop, tram to Garcia Lorca, wait for bus, bus to Palavas, 25 min away on coast , coffee and croissant for breakfast, toilet out of action. I found a space ship type cubicle. I  forgot a note to self from last trip to Paris. Read the outside instructions , particularly if they are in English, because there may not be any instructions inside.  It  was not straight forward finding the exit button. 

Long walk.

More details tomorrow.

Friday Musee Fabre

Today's main activity was a visit to the Musee Fabre, the main art gallery of Montpellier. The building was a palace with lots of huge ornate rooms. The collection was in 2 sections, pre about 1820 and post about 1820. Each section was on several different floors but they didnot connect. The lifts were not working..  So , to look at the paintings chronologically, you started at the ground went up 3 floors ( think old palace, uneven stone steps, about 40 steps between floors. In context, there are 13 steps between each floor in my building in Canberra), then when you got to the top, about 1820, you went all the way down and started up again. I tried hard to be in the right mood, but the first half of the paintings were really dark in colour , lots of nymphs and shepherds doing  whatever,  people picnicing, or Jesus being put onto the cross or taken down or some other religious figure. Good friday is not a  thing here. I was quite taken by 2 portraits side by side. One was  by Alexis Belle of Antoine Crozat , about 1715. He was dressed in really fancy clothes, with a supercilious smug expression. Apparently he was the wealthiest man in France at the time - he was a slave trader , taking slaves from Africa to the south of North america. Next to him was his wife, painted by someone else a bit later. She also had  fine lace on her, but she had a friendly gentle expression. She was doing her needlework on a frame and had a thimble on a finger.  Maybe they lived in separate parts of their palace.

I had lunch afterwards and learnt a lesson.. I sat down at a table at a restaurant without looking at their board , which most places have, indicating what their Plat du jour - dish of the day  - was. This is usually a simpler version of something on the menu, or maybe completely different, but always a few Euros cheaper than most of the main dishes. I was given the menu and when she came to take my order I asked her if they had a plat du jour. She said no, but rattled off 2 dishes. One was steak tartar and the other a fish dish , dorade, which my dictionary translates as sea bream. There was already a dorade dish on the menu but i asked for the one she said, not having a clue what else she said about the dish. After she left, I figured that the 2 dishes she rattled off were probably specials which are often nicer, but more expensive, than things on the menu. As it turned out, I was right. But it came with lots of vegetables, so that was good.

Then I came back here and stopped at the little group of shops to by something for my dinner . I was pleased there was a queue in the pastry shop. Gave me a chance to choose.

 Notes to self : Continue to look every which way when crossing some of the roads around here that are paved exactly the same as the footpaths and there is nothing to distinguish when the footpath ends and the road begins ie no gutters or height difference and no lines to tell the cars where to go. So the cars, motor bikes and bicycles all go where they like. 

WISE debit  card , as advertised,  gives a better exchange rate than 28 degree card.

Thursday

Today's plan was to tidy up  my pile of maps and accumulated brochures and do some inevitable administration. Stuff like sorting out my mobile overseas stuff, sorting out  how my daughter was going to gather all my fobs for the 3 yearly audit of all the buildings fobs that I have only just found out about, reading carefully the email from latitude finance to see if anybody has any information about me that I care about etc. I still made time for a nice breakfast sitting in a pleasant room in a hotel, a nice lunch in a little group of shops I have discovered about 3 blocks away. Several cafe/ restaurants and several nice take away shops. Lentil and beetroot salad for dinner, usually my secondary meal when I am away. The day before yesterday i had a gallette in a different shop in the same group. 2 more shops to try. I also went to the tourist bureau to get them to change my phone number on my booking for a trip to the camargue that I made the other day, but gave them my French phone number which will expire next tuesday. The details of the tour have a different meeting point to their brochure. It is 3.4km away from where the bus will drop me. Never mind. As long as it's not raining.

It is very pleasant sitting on my little balcony in the sun in the afternoon. 

Wednesday 5th St Martin de Londres

Different place for coffee and croissant.

Tram 

Walk for coffee and toilet

Bus. 

Very quickly, outer suburbs of Montpellier. Then bush. Big scrub with very rocky ground. Some vineyards but squeezed betweens hills and rocky ground.

Through few towns

Central Village of Saint Martin de Londres : Outer walls 14 to 15 century, inner walls 12th and 13th century. Inside inner walls is a church thought to be built about 11th century and added to over the years.

Bus back,. In tram saw notices of strike the next day. The French word for  disturbance is  perturbations. I was not perturbed because I knew I was staying here today to catch up on admin stuff.

Drink at a bar about 4 blocks away. Sat outside in afternoon sun watching the world go past. Life's tough.

Wednesday 5th

I am ok but tired and cannot be bothered with this today.

Tueday

Today I had my morning cup of coffee at the Montpellier Coffee Club. As a rule, I avoid overseas chains when in a foreign country.  However the coffee had been recommended and , as I discovered, the chain started in Brisbane, so that was partly OK. The coffee was nice. All i wanted with it was a croissant, but I had to have avocado on bread. Life is tough.  I spent the rest of the day wandering around various shops most with different opening hours. One was a wool shop,that also served food. When I was there a crochet lesson was going on. She invited me to the regular Friday afternoon/evening ' come along and chat and knit/crochet'. From another shop I  bought a ball of yarn and a crochet hook to make some more flowers for an ongoing project. I spent quite a while talking to a local who had visited Australia. I went to the tourist office and they booked me onto a tour of the camargue.  I had looked up several tours but they would not take single bookings.!  Hopefully the one I am on will be OK, next tuesday.  Quite a lot of merchants prefer cash to credit card here and I needed more cask. I read on the wall next to the outside teller of this big bank i chose that there was another machine inside the bank. That sounds safer I thought. Trouble was you had to press a button and wait for someone to open the door. But I didnot know that initially. I pressed the button, waited, nothing happened, so went back to read the sign again in case I had made a mistake. Someone came to the door,  saw me  hovering around wondering what to do next and who knows what he said in rapid  slightly cross French, but I got inside and got my money.

I also went to the church of Saint Roch. I need to read about him.  It felt good, but it had funny proportions. The ceiling was very high for it's length . It had bright stained glass windows. There was an exhibition about the shroud of Turin . There was an eager team of about 10 young people one of whom would pounce on anyone coming near the church and offer to lead them round.  I have learnt to deflect beggars etc by saying in English " I don't understand".  I am really trying hard to talk to people in French and occasionally  I have said " je ne comprends pas" which is sort of confusing to them. However " I don't understand" worked on the pleasant young man who approached me. I did read some of the panels  in the exhibition. 

Near here there is a small side street with a collection of little food shops. I had a delicious galette for a late lunch. Unfortunately I was tempted by the chocolate and raspberry cake.

 

Monday

My  plan for today was to go to Sete, a waterfront town along the coast SW of here about 30 to 45 minutes in the train. However, today I learned about the impact of the  transport strikes. I slept in and was not in a hurry over a very pleasant breakfast in a nice quiet room in a hotel near me. Same price as a  noisy Cafe, but other tourists rather than locals. By the time I got to the train station it was about 9.30. I lined up to talk to someone rather than try to work a machine . The next available train was at 12.30. Quite a few trains had been cancelled. The train staff do not know until 7pm the night before what the next day's timetable  will be. So, no Sete today. Next time I want to go anywhere by train, I will get there early and have my breakfast at the train station. I was surprised at how big it was.. 

So, plan B . I continued my plan of catching all the different trams and  caught a tram to a place near  the Lez and went for a walk along it. People refer to it as a river, but the section I walked along  varied between a  large drain and a stream , hardly a river.

Another tram to get back. Lunch at the nice place 2 door along from me. I lashed out and had desert - coffee gourmand. It is on many cafes menus.  It is a coffee and some miniature things , creme brulle, 2 different  tiny little cake things, and some thing else. All tiny and delicious.

Sunday.

Montpellier is made up of the old city and the surrounding suburbs. I am staying just on the western edge of the old town . It takes about 15 to 20 min for me to walk to the other side of the old town.  Sundays seem to be a day of rest for most people in Montpellier. Going on a sample of 1!  Over half the cafes were closed and most of the other shops. A friend had given me a list of the 6 best places to get a good coffee, Australian style, in Montpellier. I went to the earliest that was open.9am.  Half the way was along one of the main roads into the centre of the old town. I saw about 5 people. Then the only people I saw were a few street cleaners. The flat white was delicious. By about 9.30 the place waa full. I wound my way back through more streets that I had not been along. 

There are 4 tram lines that operate in Montpellier.  I wanted to do something brainless this morning so walked to the nearest stop and went on the one that goes to the NW and then south ( the blue line) to meet up with the tram that goes from the centre westwards. For thr first 2/3  of the first tram it  was mostly all University buildings and associated labs . Then poorer economic housing areas. More headscarves. I had planned to get a coffee or something at the terminus but the terminus was in the middle of nowhere so i got straight onto the green line to  return to the centre - except it finished in an area that I think on a normal day would have far more people around. About a km east of the eastern edge of the old town. It was a bit spooky. Ms google took me around the back of a few big hotels. No one else in sight. I think next sunday I will stay home and paint my toenails or something. 

I had seen in my wanderings a nice looking bistrot in one of the little higgledy-piggledy  outdoor spaces off the main streets. I found it fairly easily, which was lucky. I was shown to a table on the edge of this place's allocated space ( I forgot, today was a bit warmer than it has been and warm enough, just, to sit outside).  I chose to sit with my back to the rest of the restaurant  ( scary for me) and watch the people passing and imagine going to the church that is no longer a church that was about 10 steps away from where i was sitting. But unfortunately there was hoarding around the front door.

I enjoyed reading my book on my small plant-filled balcony in the sun in the afternoon. 

Saturday . Markets, Chitterings and Mikve

There is a biggish market 50m from my apartment on Saturdays and Tuesdays. I went this morning. It was overwhelming. Far too many choices and  many things i had no idea what they were.  I was particularly  impressed with the number of stalls selling a very wide variety of intesting bread. I found a fruit shop with lovely staff. One  lady talked slowly and clearly and managed to understand what I was saying.  I did buy a tielle setoise. I small round pie, about the size of a largish hand . The top is roughly put on with fluted edges. Sete, a town along the coast s of here is known for its oysters. There were several oyster stalls at these markets and at the enclosed one I went to yesterday. They all sold these. I had hoped they had oysters in them but no, other chopped up seafood in a spicy tomato sauce apparently.  Well, that's what the guy who sold it to me told me. 

I had lunch at a local French style brasserie but it was too cold to sit outside and the food was a bit ordinary. The highlight was when I was looking at the menu . There was a word, andouillettes, that i didnot know.  So looked it up. The English translation said chitterlings. Not a word i had ever heard.. So I asked the waiter who was walking past. He  rattled of a whole lot of words from which I gathered it was some bit of a pig. Then he started rubbing his stomach and miming pulling something long out. I got it . Intestines. But I also had looked it up. 

In the afternoon I went on an English speaking tour of the city. The guide was very interesting. For me the highlight was going to  the Mikve,  a medieval Orthodox Jewish ritual bath.  The guide told us about they had been filled in and forgotten about until they were rediscovered in 1985.  It was about 1 story underground.

Dinner time. 

Friday.

Today, again, I felt off colour so, after talking to Noel briefly, ( using mobile data)  I went for breakfast at the same place as yesterday. Then wandered through more back streets, seeing more quirky things, to the main covered markets . I wandered around the stalls, buying bits and pieces that should do me a few days, or not, it was less than a kilometre away. I had time to fill before the tourist bureau opened at 10 ( most of the shops opening time). I went into a cafe and was pleased that the sentence in French came out of my mouth sufficiently OK to be understood  - I would like  a coffee please, but first may I use your toilet.? Or maybe it was my silver hair and faint look of desperation amongst the wrinkles that was understod.

Again i got Tomiko at the tourist bureau. A 1 in 4 chance. I booked on an English speaking tour for tomorrow afternoon and got some bus timetables. Next stop was a wool shop. The lady had no other customers and we talked a lot about all sorts of things. I have not decided what to make. Then it was lunch time. I had no clear plan but just walked back to my apartment and then decided to just have 1 course next door at Cinq.  I was greeted with a hand shake, as I had observed 2 days ago was the custom for people who were repeats. That was nice. I just had 1 course, no desert, no wine, very restrained of me. 

When i got back from lunch I discovered that both my phone and tablet could connect to the internet.  So I could catch up on stuff.

For afternoon  tea I have just had a piece of fougass that I bought  at the markets earlier. It is a local thing, a cross between flat bread and pastry with a smear of meat paste like stuff in the middle. Or other fillings are possible.  And a biscuit that I bought somewhere else in the market. Dinner shortly will be a quiche like thing and a little dome shaped bit of something that comes from a nearby town, but I have forgotten the name.