And it goes straight to The General by Dispatch. The live version. iTunes shuffle, you just redeemed yourself.
Anyway, so Montpellier. When last we left, I had blogged a whole bunch in Word. I think this was before dinner? We'll go with that- I had heard something from the other American group about "Hey let's meet back at the hostel for dinner," and I did manage to see them as I was returning from looking for places to eat. Buuut they had made reservations for the four of them someplace and were off to go do that, leaving me to find something on my own. I ended up going to a vegetarian restaurant that Lonely Planet recommended for Montpellier. I got the Gratinée Classique, which was some sort of cornbread thing with a fried egg on top and some assorted veggies around it. It was good, but not fitting my usual diet too well and gave me a bit of a stomachache. I'd say that this fact says more about how I should eat better than the quality of the food, but dude, I don't care about buying exclusively Bio things. I'll take my food not rotting, thanks. Well, I take that back. At this point, I'll take my food not rotting and not expensive at this point. Hopefully I'll do more of the ethical business when I get back to the states. (Wow that sounds terrible.) Either way, I ate and went home, and here's a picture of that meal.
At that point, there was talk of getting drinks with the Americans later, but they were too tired and needed to pack, so they crashed, and I didn't want to go alone to a bar, and so crashed I as well.
The next morning, I went on over to the Musée Fabre, which (of course), also didn't allow photography. So you get no pictures of that. Sorry. It was an absolutely enormous museum that spanned all sorts of art, from Dutch and Flemish dudes to the contemporary crowd. It's worth seeing, but good Lord is it long. I probably shouldn't have read some of the literature they had in there, because that just wore me out even more, but I did get to see some pretty paintings and got a bit of a better appreciation for the style of the Dutch/Flemish farm landscape painter dudes. Namely, I read about how they would intentionally put the horizon lower to make the farm animals and people look more superhuman (superanimalian?), which was cool, and then that got me on my whole "HURR LOOK AT ME I CAN DO ART HURRRRRR" (Note: Rob is not qualified to "do art." The fact that he said "do art" should have been a tipoff. The caps lock too.) kick, and then I split a modifier with a parenthetical because I'm too school for cool. Anyway, lots of religious-based art for the Middle Ages, and then some Impressionist stuff, and then a bit more contemporary which wasn't as good as the contemporary stuff at the beginning of the gallery (and I have no idea what they screwed their chronology like that. Me being one to talk about screwing chronology.). It was a good experience all in all, because I had been in a pretty glum mood that morning, and the museum helped a bit. Buuuut then I fell back into it a bit. Ah well.
Upon leaving the museum, I figured I'd try to get some more pictures from nearby. So here's a park.
And the concert hall, with some weird multicolored statues.
And heck, have a view from atop the concert hall.
Precious, right?
Anyhoo, I got back to the hostel, but I didn't really want to spend a ton of money in a restaurant, and the cheaper restaurants won't really have anything authentic, I picked up a cold sammich from a supermarket and walked out to the Arc de Triomphe and the Chateau d'Eau, which Lonely Planet claimed were wonderfully illuminated at night.
Yeah, you're expecting a picture of that, aren't you? You're not getting one. It was not wonderfully illuminated. Nothing was from my vantage point. At this point, I thought about going to a bar and having a drink, but it didn't look like many were doing a booming business. I thought about waiting at the hostel for a bit and going out again, but in keeping with the glum I was riding (and seem to have rediscovered as I write THIS VERY ENTRY), I ended up just chilling in the lobby and reading before going to bed.
Of course, before that there was an incredibly trashy and obnoxious French chick in dreadlocks who went to the reception and was talking about how she was going to a club and did she look all right for the club because she really wanted to find some cool guys and not jerks at the club tonight and could he (the guy at reception) call her a taxi so she could get to the club because her cell phone was out of minutes and she was going to grab a coffee out of the machine and look at how good she looks, because it's cold and it's hard to dress for a club when it's cold. Basically, she'd leave the room, and the reception dude and I would exchange a "Wow, this chick is annoying" look. (That morning, this girl had come into breakfast, approached a black woman that she clearly did not know, and asked, with no fanfare or pleasantries beforehand, "Do you know anything about African hairstyles?" Yeah.)
You would think that would be the end of the Montpellier journey, right? Getting on the train? Oh ho no. The train was a.) delayed an absurd amount, and b.) we just randomly stopped in the middle of nowhere.
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| Scenic middle of nowhere, though. |
So I got back a fair sight later than I had hoped, which led to those cookies (see the previous post, True Believers!) getting done really late and me being tired for work the next day. Rawr.
I'm sure Montpellier is a great city. I'm sure I got there on a bad weekend for me to be visiting, between whatever was going on with my mood and whatever exams were going on for the university. I'm sure many other people would love the city. But compared to Strasbourg and every other trip I'd taken, wow. This one sucked.
But don't let that stop you from going to visit!
Oh! I almost forgot. I also saw lots of French military recruitment offices. So I'll leave you with one of those pictures, and you can come up with French military history jokes on your own.
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| You can do it. I believe in you. |
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