One Night in ....... Montpellier

The Singing Retreat finished officially Friday evening, and we spent Saturday morning saying goodbye to the workshop participants, packing our stuff, and chatting with Sandra & Kiet over a cup of coffee.

We were lucky to get a ride to Bedarieux by Francine, as she was taking her friend Odile to that station. Francine did offer to take us to Beziers, as she was heading that way, but we had decided to break up the 6 hour train ride to Cannes with a night in Montpellier, and could catch a bus from Bediareux. Thank you for the ride, Francine, and for the fan, which comes in very handy in the 35 degrees in Italy.

The bus ride took 2.5 hours - we were very happy with the air con in the bus - and was a beautiful ride through the national park and towards the coast. The end station was well outside of Montpellier, so we took a tram into the main railway station, and found a room in a very basic hotel (embedded link) on Rue du Madeline. We chose the place due it's reasonable price, good location and free WiFi, but it never worked when we were there even though we, and others complained.

Montpellier is the 8th largest city in France with 265,000 inhabitants, we only saw the city center. We were close to the old main square, it was very beautiful.

Ice cream made as a flower - very creative and tasty.

We also enjoyed going out for a meal at Entrecote, a restaurant chain that only serves one appetizer, one main course and one dessert. Their menu is famous in France, luckely we went early and avoid the big lineup! We enjoyed going to Monoprix, the local supermarket, to buy our own food. After two weeks of eating predominantly vegetarian food Andy wanted to eat something with meat in it!

Breakfast was eaten on the steps of the theatre, and Andy, an incarnated Starbucks fan, had to give in to McDonalds - not an easy decision!