tales of our gap year.

03/05/12 – 05/05/12

Montpellier, France 

We’re in the south of France!

My cousin Virginia and family lived in Montpellier for (6 or 7?) years … and ohhhh the timing couldn’t have been worse as they just moved back to Sydney in the last couple months! As we walked the streets I kept thinking ‘maybe they lived in this house.. or maybe that one.. or that one?’

Our first impression of Montpellier was quite bad as we got ripped off by a cab driver who covered the meter then sneakily pressed a few buttons which ended up tripling the fare… we didn’t catch any cabs after that!

However the lasting impression of Montpellier is definitely a good one. The people were so friendly to us. Strangers would say “bonjour” in passing, something we didn’t get once in the 6 months whilst living in London and it’s also less touristy than other parts of France we’ve done.

The train ride from Montpellier to Marseille was funny; there were 2 really really really loud and naughty boys about 5yo I think? The Mum and Grandma just let them run a muck throughout the entire carriage and all you could hear was the 2 of them (obviously) then “shhh”, “shhh”, “shhh’s” from different parts of the carriage from all the annoyed passengers. It didn’t help halfway into the trip when the cart came around and the Mum decided to purchase (of all things..) Coke!! I put my headphones on once the sugar hit kicked in :-/