Our visit to Sete

This post is mostly comprised of pictures in an attempt to visually explain the city of Sete. Linn, Rachel, Bruno and I went for the day to this neighboring city, the city were Bruno went to high school.  We took the train from Montpellier, very convenient as it only takes 20 minutes. A short walk from the train station and we were in the heart of Sete. The “down-town” runs along a large canal, one of many throughout the city. The homes, businesses and Bruno’s high school climb the incline of the hill overlooking the Mediterranean ocean. The population is largely Italian and because of the canals Sete is often referred to as the “Little Venice of France.”

We bought the necessary items for a picnic and walked along the canal to the ocean. The four of us feasted a local specialty the “Tielle.” It is a small pie filled with a spicy tomato sauce and bits of fish or octopus. Cooked throughout the day they were warm, a little spicy, not too fishy and just a little bit of grease from the sauce; they were delicious! We also tried the “Chausson aux Moules” which is smaller, made of the same pie- like crust and filled with spicy tomato sauce and mussels. Made of mostly the same ingredients we didn’t expect much of a difference but Linn and I weren’t big fans of the baked- in mussel flavor. We also bought the typical picnic food of baguettes and wine. The weather was beautiful and other than a little wind it was a glorious lunch.

After our meal we walked along the boardwalk overlooking the ocean, admiring our new surroundings. We stopped for drinks at a lazy neighborhood bar then continued our walking tour of the city. Along a residential street we talked, laughed and took a lot of great photos.  The road climbs the hill overlooking the ocean and ends at the giant cemetery. We walked through rows and rows of beautifully adorned graves. Fresh flowers at most, ceramic or silk flowers at others. There were a lot of people in the cemetery some were visiting specific graves others touring as we were.

We made our way back to the train station slowly meandering through the streets of homes, past Bruno’s school, over and along the canals. We were back to Montpellier in good time and promised ourselves we would take more day trips like this.

 

 

Allow me to fulfill my promise...

Allow me to fulfill my promise. The shopping in Montpellier is pretty good but just because it’s in France doesn’t mean it’s anything like Paris. I have done a lot of window-shopping. I’ve cruised the streets looking for nothing and finding everything and while I haven’t purchased much, I’ve seen quite a bit of what the city has to offer. The “Centre-Ville” is where all of the shops are located as it is the commercial center of the city. In one corner there is a small (by US standards) indoor mall with Galeries Lafayette as the anchor department store. The shops in the mall carry everything from shoes to electronics to home furnishings much like every mall in the states. Then there are hundreds of boutiques sprinkled throughout the city streets. Whether you are looking to invest in a timeless piece by a French aetelier or just want an inexpensive, mass-produced accessory the best places to look are in the many boutiques. They are interwoven with the great restaurants, cafes and apartments along the twisted and tangled cobbled streets. Its quite entertaining just to walk the streets and see where you end up. 

For clothing there are many too many options. Galeries Lafayette, a scaled back version of the amazing couture- carrying monolith in Paris, has mens, womens and childrens apparel, shoes and accessories from all of the major French brands. They also carry some of the top ranking Italian and American designers. In the mall there is Zara (a huge international brand) very popular in Montpellier. It is a two- floor store and is very fashionable and fairly inexpensive, it reminds me of H&M. There is also a C&A, Sephora, Gap, Camarieu, Pimkie and more. The boutiques through out town are a total mix of both high and low- end brands though none are the couture houses like Chanel, Gucci etc.

Part of shopping is noticing what people are wearing this season. What they wear to school, to work and around town. I’ve been paying close attention to all of the men’s and women’s fashions as we are so close to both Paris and Milan the fashion capitols of the world. I have found it interesting how closely people follow the trends and how similarly people dress. There are also more clearly drawn lines when it comes to age- appropriate clothing. Right now, the ladies from teens to women in their 30’s are wearing the skinny jeans which are either tucked into their tall, riding boots, worn with a ballet flat or a tall heel.  They all have some sort of take on the tweed/ wool coat with huge buttons, most are black or gray with the occasional bright red one.  Then everyone wears a scarf, especially this time of year. It is getting colder now and their scarves have transformed from delicate silk splashes of color to functional chunky wool knit ones over night.  It seems most women wear neutral tones in an attempt to blend in. Curious, I asked a local about the style he said that the women tend to dress fashionable but in more muted colors so as not to offend people. I didn’t quite understand at first but after observing for the past three weeks it seems true. Most shoes are black or gray if they’re a color it is a muted one. Every woman wears nylons with their shoes that are a similar color. The coats and scarves are all beautiful but few are in bright colors. Traditionally fall fashion colors are more muted so I’ll be interested to see what the spring brings.

For shoes and handbags there are also many, many options. I have found it interesting the differences in price ranges. There are lots of little “import shops” that don’t really have a name for their shop and all the shoes boxes are stacked and you can find a pair of boots for 25 euro. While fashion- forward the quality of product from these stores is poor. Then there are the shops in the mall and some boutiques where prices range from 60-160 euro for a similar looking boot. Finally there are the larger boutiques where one could pay upwards of 500 euro for a gorgeous pair. The handbag availability seems to be the same. There are all price ranges available but the really cool ones are 400 euro. I arrived with a handbag in poor condition so I had been keeping my eyes open for one.  I didn’t like the selections available at 15 euro which were made of “pleather” and where either black or brown. Boring! I ended up finding one at a small shop on one of the streets, tucked away like a little treasure.  I’d been there with friends weeks ago and enjoyed the store so much that I returned just last week. Their shop is full of fun accessories for yourself and your home.  I even managed to tell the shop owner that I loved his store, in French!

One very important thing to note the stores here do not have sales. In the US our shops have sales or promotions every weekend and holiday, apparently it doesn’t happen here. There are sales once in January after the New Year then again in August. I have seen some stores with markdowns on some pieces but not everywhere and certainly not banners indicating HUGE MARKDOWNS like home.

There is some of what you ladies were looking for… I’m sure I’ll have more fashion and shopping gossip as the months pass. Oh and speaking of that gossip I finally saw Sex and the City the movie… I loved it! iTunes has been a very close friend to both Linn and I over the past couple months. Next on the blog pictures and info about our recent day trip out of Montpellier and in the spirit of the Magic School Bus books I’ll leave with a teaser!

Ta ta for now.

Hi everyone! Aujourd’ hui nous sommes le 1ere Novembre 2008. We left Seattle nearly two months ago and my how things have changed! We’ve been in our dorm room since the 12th of September and started classes the following Monday. Since then we’ve fallen in to a bit of a routine. The dream of living in the South of France has gradually turned into life on a planet. We have to go to the grocery store, the bank, the post office and the barber just like everyone else. However, we’ve had to do it all in a foreign language. Each day has been an adventure from asking people what time it is to being asked for directions on the street. Though challenging it is a truly wonderful experience. 

Our dorm room is working out quite well. There wasn’t anything left behind by previous tenants so we had to start from the beginning. We’ve made a few trips to IKEA for the basics we are so fortunate to have one nearby. We also made friends with a guy who was moving out and was getting rid of quite a few things. About a month ago I was sitting downstairs sending emails and this guy came up to me and asked, in French, if I had left clothes in the dryer. I looked at him blankly and said “Je ne comprends” which means I don’t understand. He then smiled and asked in is Mid-West accent “Where ya from?” I guess he knew I was American based on my three-word response to his question. After our exchange of I’m from- he’s from he said “you know- we’re moving out tomorrow, you and your boyfriend should come by and look through the stuff we’re leaving behind.” The next day Linn and I stopped by their studio to see if they had any useful things left. It turns out there was quite a bit. We are now proud owners of a code-free portable DVD player and a mountain bike, a “bialetti” coffee maker, a fruit bowl, clothes- hangers, a bunch of spices and tea. He wouldn’t accept any money from us only the promise that we’d do the same when we’re done using them. Everything we took has come in handy and we are very grateful to have met him.  

While shopping for the basics was fun, our room was still boring! I’ve started decorating with pictures and cards from home, keep them coming Gran and Katelyn! Linn received a poster of different grape varietals on his trip to Italy, that’s up too. We even have our first magnet for the mini-fridge, a birthday present from Jessica. Slowly but surely this place is turning into a little home.  

A routine we’ve developed to spend time with each other and in an attempt to save money. I have class Monday, Tuesday mornings, all day Thursday and Friday afternoons. This allows for me to do most of the grocery shopping, banking, residency paperwork and runs to the post office. Conveniently, it allows me time to practice my basic French while at these places of business. Linn has class every day from 9 to 5. After an hour or so of time on the Internet (we don’t have internet in our room so we have to go downstairs to access the Wi-Fi) we make dinner. We have been doing a lot of cooking at home (Pat, you would be proud) on our two-burner cook-top. Linn has enjoyed coming up with new one or two pot recipes, tonight is Beef-Vegetable soup. We’ve cooked a lot of pasta or rice with meat or fresh veggies. We’ve been buying fresh bread every other day and delicious cheeses each week. We’ve also found decent beer and wine to be relatively inexpensive at the grocery stores. Which is a major reason for even shopping at them. After all, with the twice-weekly farmers markets and the small corner fruit stands, bakeries and butchers there is really no need to go to a mega-market. We’ve found time for going out with friends some nights during the week or on the weekends. We’ve found a couple good bars with patient bartenders and decent prices. On weekends we do a little exploring by taking streets we haven’t taken or busses we haven’t ridden. We have gotten used to making time on Saturday to shop for Sunday and early in the week as most businesses are closed on Sundays. Which at first was an inconvenience and now is nice because we have Sundays free to do homework and don’t have the opportunity to do much. We have taken the busses around but since nothing is open all we can do is window- shop and make notes of where we want to return.  

Last weekend, when Linn was gone in Italy, I went with friends Christina and Rachel (the girls in the photo) to the 60th Annual Foire Internationale. This is a fair at the Exposition Halls in Montpellier. We had to bus out there and pay 6 Euro each to walk around booth after booth of amazing chamois, “beautiful” leather goods, miracle lotions and creams and massage chairs. I was very similar to the state fair expo halls back home. The other thing they had was booth after booth of wine tasting and food for sale. Crepe, sandwich, crepe, sandwich… then just when we thought we’d seen it all. There was a new type of sandwich we’d not seen before. There were demi-baguettes with sliced meat and melted cheese. I know this doesn’t sound different but the way they melted the cheese was genius! They had these ½ wheels of semi-hard cheese cradled by one arm of this contraption. The other arm hinged down over the cut side of the cheese and in this arm was a heating element. They hinge the arm open and scrape all of the freshly melted cheese into the sandwich as they’re ordered. Brilliant!!  (See below)

I mentioned each day being an adventure, some challenging, some not as much. We’ve had a few funny experiences due to the lack of knowledge of the language and culture. The first weekend we moved in we explored the building we lived in and noticed the Manager had on office on each floor, each door reading “Salle de Manger.” We thought that was good for the managers and good for us because we’d be able to find them whenever we needed. It turns out, after learning a few verbs including Manger which means To Eat and vocabulary words like Salle which means Room those aren’t Manager Offices they are “rooms for eating.” It turns out we can reserve them if we have a large group of people that want to eat together. Linn and I had a good laugh over that. Then, just today we went to Carrefour, a mega grocery- plus- everything store to get some groceries and shop around for a while. We have to take the bus to get out there and fortunately it’s the one right by our dorm. We saw one go by as we were leaving so we knew we had about 20 minutes until the next one base on the Saturday schedule. After standing in the gusting wind for 40 minutes it occurred to us that perhaps the day after Halloween “All Saints Day” is actually an observed holiday here. I had to ask the bus driver if it was a holiday and he looked at me like I was nuts and said simply “Oui!” We tucked our tails and got on the bus, who knew!  

Well that is enough for this post, I promise the next one from me will have info about the shopping and the clothes for all my girls that have inquired!