2012: TIME OUT: MONTPELLIER & AIX-EN-PROVENCE

We arrived in Montpellier quite late that night and were pretty worried that the cheapo hotel we had booked didn't have a 24hr reception. After banging on the door and ringing the doorbell for a solid 5 minutes, an angry man finally came to the door, let us in and checked us in to our room.

We slept in a little the next morning, but once up we quickly got changed and set out to see the city as we only had one day there.

Unfortunately as it was a Sunday, the city was like a ghost town. There was hardly anyone walking the streets and the majority of the shops were closed. Nevertheless, it was still a pretty cool place to walk around. There was plenty of interesting street art, lots of tiny streets and every now and then you would walk around a corner and find yourself in a beautiful small square.

First stop for us was the Place Royale du Peyrou, a 3 acre plaza landscaped in 1689. It was a beautiful tree lined area which reminded us of a section of the Champs Elysees in Paris, and this was further reinforced by the arch at one end of the area which is actually also called the Arc de Triomph!

We found a nice spot for a coffee and then continued walking around the city. As the afternoon unfolded, the streets started to fill up and more shops opened up. An hour or so later we both had a huge salad for lunch and then continued on walking down towards the monumental Place de la Comedie.

Crowned at the southern end by the elegant opera house, the Place de la Comedie is a huge car free square that was laid out in the 1700's and is surrounded by beautiful balustrated buildings.

We did a bit of shopping in the arvo and then headed back to our cheapo hotel for a relax before heading out to dinner.

70,000 students make their home in Montpellier each year, meaning the nightlife and cafe culture tend for the bright young things. We found a great little square that was absolutely full of people and had a great atmosphere.

Although it was our first night in France and we really should have been going for some typical French food, there was a really cool English pub that had a great menu and seemed to be pretty well priced compared to a lot of other places we had seen.

After a few pints of cider, we both couldn't go past the bangers and mash x 2 (mashed potatoes and mashed peas!) and we weren't let down, it was a damn good meal.

We got talking to the owner and his mate (who we couldn't tell whether he was drunk, or just a freak) who were both really nice blokes and they only had to mention the raspberry cheesecake and apple crumble and we were both sold!

We walked around town a bit that night and found another example of Montpellier's weird art scene (see the bike coming out of the wall hah!), then stopped off at an Irish pub for another cider in another really cool area and then called it a night.

The next morning I did some exercise in our room and then ran down to the train station to book us tickets for later on that day. Later on after plenty of fruit for breakfast, we found a great little bookshop that was stocking heaps on English titles. We had an excellent coffee there and I found a book to read for the following weeks on the Cote d'Azur.

It took us about 3 hours including trains, buses and walking to arrive at Hotel Cardinal in Aix-en-Provence and we wasted no time in getting out to explore the city which many people had told us was really great.

Our first impressions were that it was a really cool chic kind of place and very hard to believe that it was only 25km away from the shithole that is Marseille!

We had a pretty quiet night that night and after spending a bit of cash lately, decided to have a cheap meal of take away Mexican and go home and watch a movie on the laptop. It was the first time we hadn't eaten out in so many months!!

The next morning we were up earlyish and out the door to find some breakfast before getting on with the rest of the day, which we planned to just walk around.

The city's grandest avenue, Cours Mirabeau, was amazing - A beautiful tree lined street that seemed to always have a different market going down one side of the street, whilst the other side was full of fashionable Aixois (locals) sipping espresso on wicker chairs on elegant cafe terraces.

We thought that Montpellier was a really pretty city, full of interesting art, beautiful squares of varying sizes and lots of well dressed locals, but Aix-en-Provence took it to another level.

Unfortunately the hot weather that had followed us around Spain for the last month decided to follow us around the South of France as well. It was stinking hot, but luckily there were plenty of shaded areas for us to take cover.

We spent the majority of the day just walking around and enjoying all the different sights. One thing that amazed us was the different types of food on offer, it was like we were back in Melbourne - Greek, Indian, Lebanese, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Moroccan and of course French. We twiddled our thumbs for a while trying to figure out what to have for lunch and remembered that recently we had spoken about how much we missed tzatziki, so Greek it was!

We spent a fair bit of time in the shops as they were all air-conditioned and I finally found myself a new pair of coloured jeans that I had spent the last few months searching for. Now all we needed was some cooler weather so I could actually wear them!

Out hotel room was really cool, on both counts. The air-conditioning was excellent, but the room itself was really good. Apart from being really big and having our own ensuite, it was decorated in a really old-school kind of way, right up Anna's alley!

We had a brief rest and cooled ourselves down and then walked around the corner to the Musee Granet. Its permanent collections make it one of the richest provincial museums in the world, however there wasn't really anything that stood out as being amazing.

this was the only thing worth photographing - never seen anything like it before!

Anna outside our hotel entrance

That night we had an outside table booked at a place called Le Petit Verdot which Lonely planet had suggested, but before we got there we went to one of the bars on Cours Mirabeau to have a happy hour cocktail. We felt like we needed to dress up a bit in this town and Anna even donned the heels!

the mojitos were too small and not even very good, very disappointing!

my lamb shoulder was excellent

Anna's duck was pretty good, but the sauce was very sweet

We were pretty impressed with our meals and had a funny time sitting next to a French couple who's English was just ok. They were amazed and so jealous of the adventure we were in the middle of and the guy made a comment or a quote that is just perfect for our trip - "you may have empty wallets at the end, but your head will be full of memories" - love it!!

It was very funny and embarrassing at one stage when they asked us what we had planned for the next few weeks......I was trying to tell them about a place called Cap d'Ail that we were planning on staying a few days later, but at the time I couldn't remember the exact name and so for about 10 minutes they thought that we were going to Cap d'Agde, which is one of the most popular swingers resorts in the world and located only an hour from Aix-en-Provence. Luckily we all worked out that was not where we were going because at one stage I thought they were going to invite us back to their house haha!

We walked around the market for a while after dinner and couldn't help ourselves but buy some macaroons to take back to our hotel room. They actually weren't that good, but I'm sure we'll get better ones in Paris!

The next day we had a day trip planned down to marseille and then to a place called Cassis. It was only a 30 minute train ride to Marseille, but another 30 minutes was all it took for us to realise that Marseille is an absolute dump of a place and made Naples in Italy look like paradise!

the best photo we took in Marseille - leaving!!

Another 30 minute train ride and then a 20 odd minute bus ride and we arrived in the really cool little fishing village of Cassis.

Although Cassis was really pretty, we wasted no time in buying tickets for an hour boat ride along the coast to see the spectacular Les Calanques.

The Calanques are a protected 20km stretch of high, rocky promontories rising from the bright turquoise sea. Sheer clefs are occasionally interrupted by idyllic beach-fringed coves, mostly only possible to reach by the water.

They really were absolutely amazing and we wished that we could have spent longer than an hour out on the water, but an hour still gave us the opportunity to see these beautiful inlets.

our skipper was taking it pretty easy

There were about 8 people on our boat and because everyone else was French, the skipper spoke in French the whole time, so we didn't understand anything he was saying about the different coves he took us in to, but I did understand when he said we could jump out and have a swim!

Back in Cassis we walked around for a bit, got an ice-cream and a crepe and then set off for Aix-en-Provence.

There was a really cool fountain in our street called the four dolphins fountain, which was interesting because the so called dolphins looked more like some angry fish you would find in the depths of the ocean. This small square in the shade of the four corner trees is a great example of the charms and pleasures of strolling through the streets of Aix!