Montpellier, France

An early rise to catch our high speed train to Montpellier: adios Spain 🇪🇸, Bonjour France 🇫🇷!

Neither Terri nor I were sure why we decided to stop and stay in Montpellier, France. Although, it did make for a convenient spot, time-wise, being between Barcelona and Monaco. Our train stopped near downtown giving us a short 1.5k walk to our Airbnb. We arrived before check-in time and needed to waste a couple hours at a nearby tavern: our time was well spent reading/sending emails as well as I was totally dominating in our multiple games of gin rummy all the while sampling the local tapas and bebidas.

Our Airbnb is located very close to a popular square and in a building that must be a few hundred years old. To get into our Airbnb took 3 locked doors and two flights of not well lighted stairs, still very cool. Actually, the entire town area we were in looked to be 200-300 years old, in excellent condition and very pretty.

We decided to tour a castle with it’s surrounding vineyard, gardens and wine tasting so we walked the two+ miles to the castle grounds. Upon arriving we were given the prices and told that if we had lunch in the castle restaurant, we would get a 3€ discount on our guided tour, ok! Evidently lunch in a castle is more valuable than in most places, as our 62€ lunch saved us 6€ on our admissions!?! The tour was given in both French and English, note to self: get tours in only one language as a dual language tour takes more than twice as long….the castle has had a long and interesting history through wars, epidemics, good times and bad.

The Montpelier beaches are recognized as being the best in Europe-our next outing. We took the local tram to get as close to the beaches as we could, not an easy task as it turns out. Not sure which way to go after getting off the tram, I noticed a couple with a beach umbrella, (a good sign). I spoke to the young lady, (a British girl), who spoke great English, as well as French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and a little German…..underachiever.

We had a quick conversation on the nicest beaches and she spoke to her French-only speaking boyfriend then asked if we wanted to follow them? “That would be great!” I was thinking while I’m sure her boyfriend was thinking just the opposite. So much for his romantic beach walk. We had a nice conversation on the way to the beach and picked up 4 more people who were looking for the beach. Arriving at the beach , the young couple hurried off to be on their own. The beach was very pretty, the day was very nice and there were a few kiters out enjoying the breezes.

Next stop: Monaco 🇲🇨

Maybe those crap classes that Terri and I took will pay-off!?!🎲🎲🤑