When you think of the South of France, it’s Nice, Monaco and St Tropez that normally spring to mind. So why am I heading to Montpellier in the South West of France instead of some of the South of France’s more glitzier relatives you may well ask. And I wouldn’t blame you, because this is what I was thinking when I jumped onto a very full easy jet flight from Gatwick to visit a friend who had recently moved to Montpellier for work. I soon began to change my mind though!
The airport is very close to Montpellier, so within 20 minutes my friend and I were wandering through Montpellier’s charming historic city centre, which has more beautiful old buildings, lop sided churches, dusty antique shops and winding cobbled streets than you can shake a baguette at.
We headed first to the Place de la Comédie, which is the epicentre of Montpellier, for a coffee and sat and watched the world go by. With the sun on my skin, rainy old London already seemed a long way away and I was already day dreaming about relocating here. After that we decided to walk along the neighboring Champ de Mars, a tree-lined esplanade where there is a daily street market, funky art gallery the Musée Fabre and a clutch of bistros.
