Montpellier, France

During my last few years of working when I was dreaming of retirement, I was picturing a nomadic life, staying for 2-3 months in European towns that weren’t too touristy. I wanted to live in Europe, not be a tourist. Montpellier is the type of town that I had pictured. It has 300k people but there are way more students here than tourists. No cruise ships and Rick Steves doesn’t include it in his books. It has a beautiful old town with a large maze of pedestrian only streets and old fancy architecture. Lots of small town squares with many sidewalk cafes to waste away the day drinking coffee or wine and eating cheese platters. There are miles of bike trails and you can ride along a river to the Mediterranean in less than an hour. We stayed in the Beaux Arts neighborhood which was within walking distance of old town or just 2-3 tram stops away (like our Seattle neighborhood). We were able to visit our neighborhood restaurants, grocery bodega, and boulangerie multiple times and started seeing some of the same faces and we could see us being a part of this community if we stayed longer. But, we aren’t ready for slowing down our travel yet and at this point in our retirement, we are still staying only a week or so in each town. But if we ever do decide to stay a couple of months somewhere, we will remember the Beaux Arts neighborhood of Montpellier.

We like to take city tours to get a feeling for the town on our first day. We found Benoit who told stories to give us an entertaining tour as well as tell us some great tips on what we should do in his city. One of the places he took us was the church of Saint Roch to tell us his story. Saint Roch had gotten the plague and decided to go out in the country to die. A dog found him laying on his death bed in the woods. The dog brought him bread every day to keep him alive. The dog’s owner got suspicious about his loss of bread and eventually followed the dog to find Saint Roch. It was a miracle and he was eventually sainted. Below is the statue of Saint in the church named after him. All his statues and paintings show his thigh to prove that he had the plague wounds that got him his sainthood. Benoit believes that makes him the sexiest man in Montpellier. If you visit Montpellier, we highly recommend Benoit’s tour.

We rented some bikes and rode along the river one day. They were heavy bike-share bikes so we didn’t get too far before we decided it wasn’t worth it. Sometimes rental bikes at 50 cents an hour aren’t worth much more than 50 cents an hour.

One day we took the train to the small town of Sete on the Mediterranean Sea. We had great seafood lunch after an oyster appetizer. Then we walked to the top of the hill to work off our lunch. Great views! The next day we took a tram to another beach town and had a lunch of mussels, cuttlefish, razor clams, fish, octopus and squid. Nothing was bad.

Our last full day in town, we took a long walk through a nature preserve to do some bird watching. It reminded us a lot of our Nisqually nature preserve near Olympia, Washington that we have been to many times. Boardwalks through estuaries with a lot of different birds including lots of flamingos.

We had a lot of great food in Montpellier and enjoyed strolling the pedestrian only streets with the old architecture. Lots of breaks for coffee or wine in the cafes.

Our Airbnb was spacious and hosts were great but the shower wasn’t the best and the balcony was filled with an overgrown Ficus plant. Next stop- Wine County in Bordeaux!!!!