Montpellier Days 1 and 2!

Okay, here I am typing into a Word document because the Wifi doesn’t work right now. But it all works out because I’M IN MONTPELLIER! Which really doesn’t merit that much excitement in the grand scheme of things. I mean, it’s great that I’m away from Combs, especially given my most recent “Oh, Bev” posting (speaking of, she was much nicer the next day- maybe I was just in a bad mood that night, maybe there’s a reason I don’t like dealing with other people AKA Bev while I’m cooking, but either way, much better, even though she did her usual vaguely passive-aggressive, “Oh I wish I had the money to travel like that” and being somewhat critical of my initial plan to go to Avignon (thwarted by a lack of lodging opportunities the night before) because I guess she didn’t think that I maybe wanted to see the Palais des Papes rather than a general medieval French town? But I digress and prattle on in my parentheticals), but Montpellier has been kinda meh. Don’t get me wrong, lovely city, plenty of museums to see, but the ones I’ve seen so far have been somewhat mediocre/not really my thing, and there’s a distinct lack of bodies of water to take pictures of canals and bridges. But that doesn’t stop me from trying!

Anyway, yes, I decided on Montpellier on the advice of another assistant because Avignon was booked and I couldn’t figure out lodging on the cheap anywhere else. I grabbed an early TGV out of Paris (having gotten far too little sleep, as I’ve been doing over the past couple of weeks, alas) and got into Montpellier just before noon (like, 5 till) and made the 15ish minute walk to my hostel. And this would have been great if the hostel wasn’t closed (and I mean doors locked, no one inside) from noon until 3. And so, I wandered. Want to see what I saw?

Of course you do. And I want Word to stop this extra spacing baloney so that I don’t have gaps you can drive a truck through between my sentences.

So right off the bat I got to see the Place de la Comédie, which is very nice and sunlit and full of overpriced restaurants and cafés that are surprisingly (or maybe not given the convenience) hopping around noon. And there’s a MacDo that I considered going to today to get Wifi, but I settled on another café down the street to get a more French experience and part with more of my euros than I otherwise would have. But the café crème was very good, and they served it with a little bit of chocolate. Daww. However, that’s more of a later thing, but you knowing it now saves me the need to go back to it later (or something like that). Either way, your chronology gets to be a bit wacky, as is my wont. Just pretend you’re reading Les Mis around the time of that really long sentence about Louis d’Orléans. Wait- no. Don’t do that. That sentence is really boring and uses semicolons like I use parentheses.

Anyway, since I had to wander around with my backpack (you know, the Philmont pack that has served me well lo these many years), I decided to shy away from museums a bit, which disrupted my initial plans a little. I went by my hostel and then backtracked to the gare to get an idea of how long it takes to get there when you know where you’re going (and to find more or less the most direct route). Then I continued to wander and came across the Faculté de Medecine, where you can find the Musée Atger, which I wanted to visit after I got my stuff dropped off at the hostel. Then (after a jaunt back to the hostel to check on how long it would take to get to the Atger from the hostel, because I had nothing better to do I guess), I went over to the Jardin des Plantes.

In all its planty goodness

See that? It's all closed.

The Jardin des Plantes is actually pretty cool in theory, but in December, it loses a bit of its allure. The concept behind it is that the medical school established it as a source for the students to do research on botanical remedies and such. (I’m sure Bev, naturopath that she is, would love this until she realized that this is how the so-called “medical mafia” finds new drugs. Of course, even then she’d probably deny it because she knows what she knows, and she’s read things, and I’m too young to understand. /rant) Again, I’m sure in summer, it’s absolutely wonderful with all sorts of flowers. As is, it was surprisingly green, mainly due to the evergreens and cacti they’ve got there.

Also, a significant portion of the gardens are closed for renovations or some such. Ah well.

And then I kept wandering, where I saw such things as…

A nice French street

A nice view

How precious. Anyway, my shoulders thoroughly hurting after all this, it was finally 3, and after getting a bit lost again, probably looking vaguely ridiculous with my giant backpack, I meandered back to the hostel and got checked in, whereupon I met a group of American students studying abroad in Aix-en-Provence (2 from Vandy, one from John’s Hopkins, one from Barnard, who called Barnard a “girl’s school.” I was amused by the latter’s comment).

Anyhoo, I convinced them to come along to the Faculté de Medecine to see the Musée Atger, because hey, it’s free, it’s open, and it could be fun. So we went there and saw a surprisingly well-furbished building (French universities are pretty run down- we admittedly didn’t go into any classrooms, but the hallways in some places were a bit sketchy looking). We finally figured out where the museum was (it’s housed within the Faculté, but there are no signs for it when you just go in), and we made our way up there!

Hooray!

And then we found that it’s closed for electrical work. Basically this weekend only. Great. Fine. We didn’t want to see any of your Italian and Flemish drawings anyway. Nyah.

So we headed next door to the Cathedral (St. Pierre I think?), which was nice. I took pictures. They’re the obligatory ones, and you can head to the Picasa to see the interior shots, but I’ll give you a nice exterior shot of it.

See? Wasn’t that nice? Of course it was.

Then we went to see the Arc de Triomphe (or tried- one of the people in the group had a rather irritating tendency to just suddenly run off in another direction, which made keeping the group together a tad difficult) and the park around it. It was very pretty, though cold.

Around this time, we were starting to get a bit cold (by we, I mean they, because I’ve gotten a bit used to the Parisian winter, where there’s no sun and it’s a bit colder, so I can deal with wind and such. They’re only a few weeks into Aix, where it’s likely warm enough to not make a huge difference), and then we started to get hungry, only to find that places for dinner only open at 7.

But at 7, dine we did. I found a little Italian place down a side street near the hostel that had pretty cheap (under 10 euro) main dishes. It was an incredible buy- the portions were pretty well sized, the waiter kept bringing us water and bread without us having to ask (which is somewhat rare from what I’ve seen of French restaurants, but then that’s just the Parisian ones). I opted against dessert, but one of our party went for it, getting an ice cream thing and initially asking for one spoon. He probably thought, as I did, that it’d be maybe a scoop or two with a little bit of topping.

We thought wrong. Thankfully, the waiter convinced us to go with 5 spoons (for the 5 of us), because this thing was huge. It was about 4 scoops of coffee ice cream, a Nutella center, a chocolate mousse topping (which was gigantic- took us about 5 minutes to get through just that part), and had some sliced almonds over the top. I wish I had had the presence of mind to have gotten pictures of this, because it was goodlordamazing.

And then after dessert, the waiter brought out some (I think) Limoncella (lemon after dinner drink- sorta like a somewhat alcoholic lemonade?).

Basically, it was quite possibly the best value French dinner I’ve had since I’ve been in France. Full and tired as I was, I opted to go to an Internet café (because the hostel Wifi, as I noted before, is down. Grr.) for a bit to check e-mail and run my Mafia (yeah, I have a problem) and check my webcomics (crap, forgot XKCD. Oh well- I’ll get that next time I find Internet.). At this point, I finally met my roommate, an older (40s maybe?) German actor who is trying to improve his French. So I got some French speaking in, read a few more pages of Madame Bovary (yeah, that’s what I’m reading right now. It was great for the Monet expo, which I’ll talk about in a shorter post than this one, because I’m on page 3 of my Word doc and am only almost through day 1), and went to sleep, whereupon I was awoken several times by the older German fellow snoring and then some 3^rd roommate snoring.

And so ended day 1.

Day 2 began with me eating way too much of the free breakfast (bread and cereal with material for hot chocolate and some sort of orange nectar thing which was terrible but likely had vitamin C, and I don’t want the scurvy) and heading out to find museums. Unfortunately, all the museums I’ve seen thus far (one more for tomorrow- the actual art museum) forbid photography. I don’t really get why they forbid ALL photography, because it’s not like these are newish things that could be copied or something, but whatever. Anyhoo.

First museum was the Musée de l’Histoire de Montpelier (I think- maybe I’ll check before I post this, but probably not). It’s actually really cool- it’s in the crypt of the old cathedral, which was destroyed during the Revolution. The guy who was working when I got there was really cool, and you basically walk an audioguide while they show you pretty bad animations and films of the history of Montpellier. Got to see the crypt, a couple of reproductions of sarcophagi looking things, and got to see the ossuary. Very informative and a cool atmosphere, and like I said, the guy running it was really good about the tour. Plus, I was the only one there, so he was basically my personal tour guide.

Also it was free (since I’m under 25) and gave me a ticket for two other museums.

After that, it was around 11:30, and since most of the museums close around noon, I didn’t want to try any of them and just wandered, whereupon I found a charming little exposition of barrels.

Seriously.

Apparently it’s an organization (located in an old cathedral I think) that runs programs to get underprivileged kids in the area involved in art and other organizations. While some were a bit too modern-art for my taste, most of them were really cool. Again, they’re all on Picasa, go, check them out. They’ll be on Facebook too, of course. Also, there was some sort of sweepstakes where you could win either your weight or a barrel of wine (wasn’t clear on the translation)- different wines for different prizes (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, etc).

Anyhoo, I wandered a bit more and ended up settling for that café I mentioned earlier. After that, the museums were again open, and I went on over to the Pharmacy and Chapel museum, which was surprisingly interesting given the size. It was basically 3 rooms, and the guide explained the whole history of the pharmacy, which was run by nuns and was (I think) the first laïque and government sponsored pharmacy for the poor in Europe. The tour guide complimented me on my French (rough start because I was coming off of some time on TV Tropes, which always throws me into English-mode), and we got to see two rooms of the pharmacy (including various receptacles for medication and such) and a chapel with a few paintings.

Then I went to the Musée du Vieux Montpellier. This one houses Renaissance and Revolution-era stuff. It’s pretty much self-guided, and…  I wasn’t too impressed. I did get a few pictures before the lady said that it wasn’t allowed. Mostly maps and rooms and some portraits that weren’t well labeled. Cool if that’s your thing, but not really mine. But hey, it was the last of the three free ones (Pharmacy being the other, and the exposition being free but unrelated).

Finally, I went to the Musée Languedocien, which houses a bunch of Roman/Greek/Egyptian artifacts. I didn’t know photography wasn’t allowed for a while, so I got a couple of shots. But I didn't put captions in here, so you get a wall o' text and the chance to look at the pictures on facebook/picasa. They weren't that great, honestly, but the albums are worth looking at anyway.

Ultimately, I wasn’t a huge fan of that one either. At the end, I did ask the worker a question, and he was really good about answering it. I think if I’d had a guide, it would have been a much better experience. Also, it was 6 euros. That’s a pricey ticket for a pretty small museum. I guess that’s why I was the only one in there? (Seriously, there was NO ONE going to museums today- I saw one tour group in Vieux Montpellier, and I think they may have hit Pharmacie as well, but it was bizarrely empty. Maybe something else was going on that I should have been doing instead?) Anyhoo, I finished that and headed back to the hostel, whereupon I proceeded to throw some pictures on my compy and get this thing written. Whereupon I used far too many “anyhoos” and continued to do a very event-based blog rather than giving any real perspectives. Maybe they will come later? I don’t know.

And for tomorrow (wow, hit the 5 page mark without pictures), I’ll hit up the actual art museum, maybe walk around a bit more, and hopefully have a groovy time. I’ll be back in Combs on Monday (hopefully after Bev has gone back to work after lunch), and then I will do some more baking- going to do cookies (likely Toll House or a variant) and maybe a quiche to run through some eggs and have something for (as Pete would say) brekky. Yeah, I’ll get Pete introduced in here soon, hopefully. Still lots of catching up to do, but this Word doc thing might be an idea.

EDIT! Yeah the quiche didn't happen. Oh well. Cookies did, though, and are forthcoming on the regalia.