An adventure on two rails. Step 6: Montpellier (France)

After 19 hours travelling on 8 trains, maybe any city would have seemed a Paradise, but Montpellier really impress us in a positive way. Nice, live, colorful: it tastes of sea and cheerfulness. We arrive for lunch time and we eat an half of water melon bought from a greengrocer. We visit the city walking with the backpacks, we are tired but happy to have done this very long stretch of road (or, better, binaries) because it’s worth.

Between a church made of huge icecream cones and bikes nestled in the walls, we stop to have a break in front of a shopping center: we buy from a bakery a strange thing with cheese which has the consistency of a pneumatic and the taste of a sofa, and a chocolate sweet thing which helps to raise self-esteem of our tastebuds. We are in front of a map of the shopping center, searching for a supermaket, and a guy offers his help. Speaking a mix of French and Spanish he explains were to find all the supermarkets of the city, with the differences of prices between each of them. Pleasantly surprised of this meeting, we do the shopping for the dinner and we go to the flat we rent for the two night we’ll spend here.

After three days and two nights around Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and France, we stink like dromedaries (backpacks contribute making the humps) and we are really tired. The guy who rents us the apartment offers us a beer and we immediately feel good in this small but cozy house. Made the most desired shower of last 20 years and a fast dinner, we fall asleep as hibernate tortoises.

A very sweet awakening thanks to croissants bought at dawn by Eleonora makes the day to start very good. We rent two bikes thanks to the good bike-sharing service of the city and we travel the 16km cycle lane which brings to the coast, stopping on the way to “borrow” a bunch of grapes from a vineyard. Some hours on the beach, another pedal stroke to come back to the city, a stop at the supermarket and cooking of romantic dinner of fish, accompanied with a good local rose wine. Even this second-last step was at the end very very nice.

Andrea Cuminatto

Pictures by Eleonora Burroni

LEGGI QUESTO ARTICOLO IN ITALIANO: Un’avventura su due binari. Tappa 6: Montpellier (Francia)