Summer Holiday: Paris to Sète

So! We're back, and happily chilled out. Although - as predicted - my brief trip to the Midlands of England brought me right back to stressed out. But that's a half week behind me now, and though I'm still a little shaky about driving, I'm starting to mellow back to a reasonable level of post-vacation zen.

And now to recall the stories of our trip, which I've decided to break into chunks, lest I create one giant blog post that takes several sittings to read.

Here we go:

Saturday
Paris à Sète

It's hard to imagine that a three hour train ride can take one to such a dramatically different place, but after deboarding the train in Montpelier, we felt like we were in another world. A warmer, more relaxed world. The high speed TGV line is a wonder. And after having bought advance tickets for a mere 25 euros each, we were feeling pretty smug.

Montpelier is a fairly large city, but we were anxious to move on to our hotel and settle in. So we picked up our rental with little issue - a surprisingly large Ford Mondeo - turned on the GPS, and started making our way out of town.

We drove straight to Sète, a little penninsula sticking into the Mediterranean Sea. As we crossed a bridge over a marsh I saw flamingos wading in the water. Flamingos in France, so cool.

As we entered Sète the traffic became heavier, and when we edged over a bridge over a canal I looked down and saw bleachers along the water and two large white boats floating toward each other. Canal jousting! I'd read about it in my travel book, but I didn't imagine that we would see any of the festivities, being so late in the summer. I nearly leapt out of the car in excitement, camera in hand, but David calmed me down and promised that we'd park. We found a nearby underground parking structure, managed the first of many tight parking jobs, and dashed to the surface.

It was early evening, and we easily found seats in the bleachers. Each boat held eight rowers, one guy manning the rudder, two musicians, and a handful of jousters on a sort of wide ladder extending behind the boat. One jouster stood at the back, a wooden sheild in one hand and a long pole in the other.

At each end of canal, the boats would face off. The jousters raised their poles and sheilds in a manly, come-and-get-me manner, and the musicians - one guy on a snake-charmer's kind of clarinet and one drummer - would start a cheery little battle tune. The rowers would bring the boat up to ramming speed, and the two boats would pass alongside each other. As their ends met, the two opposing jousters would try to knock the other one off. If they didn't succeed, the boats would turn around and try again. If one guy (or both) got knocked into the canal, the next jouster would replace him and the boats would square off again.

This went on and on, with no apparent scoring system, and no apparent teams, as the only thing marking the difference between the two sides were the trim colors of the boats - blue and red. The jousters were replenished onto the ladders every once in a while, and all were dressed identically in blue striped shirts and white pants. They seemed to be having a great time, and more than a few looked a little drunk.

We watched for a half an hour or so, saw some spectacular falls, and resolved to continue to the hotel. We continued along the penninsula road until we reached our hotel, which was outside the town, but close to the water. At the restaurant across the street we had a simple dinner of traditional southern French food - fish soup, spiced mayonnaise with bread, mussels, and pear tart - then crashed in our room. What a great day to kick off our holiday!