Montpellier: The Accidental Tourist

Now it’s time for a little bit about Montpellier. As you know, I didn’t want to do anything but switch trains in Montpellier, but that hope died almost as soon as I arrived. Between what I had learned at the train station and the bus sales office, I was going to have to spend the next thirty hours in Montpellier and I had to make the best of it. (Note: The pictures in this entry were taken from my little tour of Montpellier and may or may not correspond with the paragraphs to which they are closest. I’m sure you can handle any confusion that may cause.)

The first thing I had to do was get a hotel room for the night. The first hotel I stopped in was a Holiday Inn and I asked if it had any single rooms for the night. The guy at reception told me that it did, but that the rooms were 110 euros a night. He pointed me in the direction of cheaper hotels and I went into the first one I said that had a “Free WiFi” sign on the door. The rooms here were only 48 euros a night and I decided that would do. I forget the name of the hotel, but the hotel was pretty forgettable anyway. I went up to the room and discovered that the toilet didn’t have a seat. I hadn’t seen that in a hotel before, but at least it flushed and was sufficiently clean, so I didn’t argue. I also learned the next morning that the walls were incredibly thin as the couple next to me enjoyed a little them time and displayed little modesty in doing it. Whatever. The bed was comfortable enough and I slept well.

In the morning, I left my backpack at the hotel because I still had ten hours to kill, but I brought my other bag with me because it held my computer and I was a little nervous about leaving it in the baggage room at the hotel.

The day was beautiful, but I was carrying a load and had no idea what to do. The hotel’s location was fantastic, however, as it was close to the train station and to the central square in the old part of the city. (I later learned that the square is shaped like an oval and that it is one of the largest pedestrian squares in all of Europe, or so I was told.) There was also a mall nearby, so I went to that to kill some time. I also spent some time in a McDonald’s because it had free wifi and a bathroom. It also had a CBO – chicken, bacon and onions – that was actually quite tasty. Do we have those in the U.S.? I don’t go to McDonald’s there often enough to know.

Since the day was so beautiful, I decided to sit out in the park and write some blog entries. While I was sitting in the park, I noticed a little, white, toy-like train go by full of tourists. On the side of the train, I read that it was a 40-minute tour of Monpellier that cost only six euros. I also saw that it left from Comedie Place, which I recognized as a place that was just around the corner from where I was sitting. I needed to kill some time and this seemed like a good way to kill it.

The little tourist train was actually pretty interesting and well-worth the six euro price of admission. We went all around the old city of Montpellier and learned some of the history and saw all of the landmarks. The post office was really nice. No, seriously, it was. There also was an Arc de Triomphe, patterned after the famous one in Paris and not a hell of a lot smaller than the original. One interesting tidbit was that I picked up was that Magnolia trees were named after a guy from Montpellier named Magnol. At least that’s what they said. I always blame my misinformation on them.

Okay, that’s about all I have for Montpellier. I wasn’t there long and I was there against my will, so my bitterness probably prevented me from enjoying it as much as I could have. From here, you can go back and read my last post about leaving Montpellier and then read the next one about my next day in Valencia.

I'm An American, Get Me Out Of Here!!!

Montpellier was a pretty nice city. This post, however, is not about Montpellier. That probably will be the next post. This post is about why I was in Montpellier. If you had seen my itinerary at any point during my journey (since my itinerary changed often while I was on my journey), the only reference that you would have seen to Montpellier is that this is the city in which you need to switch trains from any point in France to Barcelona. I figured that I was going through it at some point, but I had hoped for a much shorter period.

I knew that many trains in the south of France had been cancelled due to the train strike. A few days before I was scheduled to go to Barcelona, the train people in Nice told me that my train to Montpellier from Nice had been cancelled, but that I could catch a train from Nice to Marseille and then catch another train from Marseille to Montpellier and head to Barcelona. Fair enough. I arrived at the train station an hour earlier than I needed to, just in case something went wrong. Something went wrong. I saw that my train to Marseille wasn’t on the board. I went to the ticket counter and found out that my train had been cancelled, but there was a train to Marseille that was boarding now. He told me that if I ran, I could make it. I ran. I made it.

I arrived in Marseille, and having been there before, went straight to the ticket counter to see what I could find out. The person at the counter told me that there was no way I could get to Barcelona today. Another person at the booth suggested that the best way to get to Barcelona would be by bus and pointed me (sort of) to the bus station, which is located in the same building. After I finally found the right line in which to stand and making it to the front of said line, the bus dude told me that the next train going to Barcelona that wasn’t sold out would be departing Saturday morning. It was still Thursday morning and I was only going to be in Barcelona for one day, on my way to Valencia. That wouldn’t work. I went back to the train counter and spoke with another ticket agent. She told me that she could get me to Montpellier, but that she had no idea if there would be a train to Barcelona waiting for me. She told me that they had run some busses a few days before from Montpellier to Barcelona, but she didn’t know if they were doing that today. I had already spent some time in Marseille, so I bought a ticket to Montpellier and decided that I would try my luck once I got there.

My luck wasn’t in the mood to be tried. I arrived in Montpellier, got off the train and looked at the big board. There was no reference to Barcelona or anything else in Spain. I went downstairs in the station where the information booth was located. Rather than a “booth” they had a few people at a few tables telling lots of angry people that they weren’t going anywhere because of the strike. I was informed that there were no trains going to Spain that day or the next, but I was directed to a travel agency a few blocks away. The travel agency was useless, but when I left the agency, I saw a sign down the block for the European bus lines Eurolines.

I went in and inquired if there were any buses taking off anytime soon for Barcelona. The answer was no, not until the next night. How about Valencia? Madrid? Zaragoza? Bilbao? Anywhere in Spain? Nope. Vive la France!!! Well, if I couldn’t get to Barcelona tonight, I was going to Valencia. When was the next train to Valencia? It was the same train as the one to Barcelona, leaving Friday night at 9 pm and arriving in Valencia at 7 am on Saturday morning. Okay, that would have to do.

The guy’s directions to the bus station were horrible. I took a tram to a station in Montpellier where the guy told me I would see signs for Eurolines. (Getting off the tram, I fell and my backpack got wedged between two empty seats. I had to squirm out of the backpack – it’s huge – and then pull the backpack out from the seats to exit. Nobody even bothered to see if I was okay. Thus France.) I didn’t see any signs for Eurolines. I walked around in full gear for an hour, following useless directions located on my ticket. Arriving back at the tram station at the last possible minute, I finally saw a Eurolines bus and learned that I only needed to walk around 200 feet to the bus stop. A sign would have helped.

Whatever. I got on the bus and headed towards Valencia. From here on out, the story gets mundane. The bus was pretty full, but not packed. The trip was rather uneventful and painless, except for the French dude who was pulled off the bus at the Spanish border because he didn’t realize that he needed a passport in order to get into Spain. (I’m not sure I would have realized that either. I’ve crossed many an EU border and have never had my passport examined before unless I was entering or exiting the U.K.) I arrived in Valencia and another post will pick it up from there, after an earlier one talks about my time in Montpellier. I’m being productive on the train from Valencia to Madrid.