11th June

We started the day packing and getting ready to leave our compact but cosy apartment in Aix.  While we have loved it, we will not miss the climb up and down to the bed.  Our hosts arrived with croissants (chocolate if you don’t mind) for morning tea and home-made olive tapenade for us to take with us.  We managed an interesting discussion about French cuisine.  So much of their diet is rich in carbohydrates, sugars and fats; bread, chocolate, olive oil, cheese, processed meats, desserts heavy on cream and butter, yet the population are not overweight.  It seems the secret is to only eat a little. But how to do that with all the specialty chocolate shops, cookie shops, lolly shops, icecream shops, bakers..........?  One interesting titbit we learnt was that when you serve garlic, the French always offer a roasted coffee bean to chew on to remove bad breath.  Christine and Edouard are a lovely couple and it was good to catch up again.  I’d like to think we will keep in touch as they would love to bring their three children out to Australia for a year, sometime.  We would like to help make that possible.  All too soon we had to leave for the station on foot, dragging our ever increasingly heavy luggage (burnt off a few of those croissant kjs).  We caught the train back to Marseille, this is our third time here and we know where everything is now.  We had time for a coffee before the connection to Montpellier, just a 2 hr journey.  Wow!  We are delighted with this choice.  The city centre has no cars so just trams and buses and lots of people out on the streets as we walk for five minutes to the New Hotel de Midi.  After checking in to this recently refurbished old hotel with sweeping marble staircases, gorgeous original leadlight, mosaic tile floors and intricate ironwork we head out for a late lunch.  Plenty of choice in the adjoining Place de la Comedie.  From there we took the 2 hr walk around the historic centre of town.  I thought it was going to take much longer as it was hard to drag Eric away from the Women’s Beach Volleyball competition taking place in the city square. I had to entice him with the possibility of seeing more Roman Ruins!  By contrast he didn’t take much convincing to proceed past the cultural display from Portugal.  So much going on, wedding parties walking through town, Kurdish protesters, another rally we couldn’t make out the purpose of...... But once I got him past the volleyball, and I bought one more pair of shoes at the market, we made pretty good time. We are delighted to have spent the afternoon here; Montpellier is gorgeous with lots of green spaces with big plain trees and gardens, fountains and monuments, pedestrian malls and action in the streets.  After dinner we were entertained by some fabulous acrobatic/wrap dancing buskers and  we made another detour to the beach volleyball – just to see if the men were playing but again it was the women in skimpy outfits!