Bienvenue à Caitlin!

All's well that ends well, I suppose: we have our girl with us, so that's good. But let me tell you, the week did not start promisingly, and continued less so.

First, it got unreasonably, unseasonably cold, a Mediterranean polar vortex, with temperatures in the low single digits during the day and, as noted in my last post, a snow shower on Monday. Karen and I hibernated for two days.

On Thursday, we roused ourselves and went out. We wanted to do a dry run of the walk to where we would catch the navette to the airport the next day. The bus terminal is down by the Olympic pool at Antigone (which I wrote about earlier.) We were renting a car at the airport, so we could go to the airport at Nimes to pick up Caitlin, who was flying in on Ryan Air from lovely Luton.

Dom Bosco church, Antigone

Why didn't we just fly her into Montpellier, you ask? A very good question. I can't remember why. Probably it was to save a few bucks, which likely we didn't do, given the cost of the car, the navette, etc. (But we did get the car for an excellent price, through EasyCar: C$180 for 11 days. So now we have it for Caitlin's entire stay. Although as later events have shown, this may not be entirely a good thing.)

The walk to the bus stop on Thursday started badly. I had downloaded a free GPS navigation app to my tablet, and free maps. I stowed the tab in my inside jacket pocket with one earbud inserted, and off we went. We got pretty much what we paid for with the GPS and maps - hopelessly lost, almost immediately. We had to go back to the apartment and start over with analog backup. Even with a map, on our second attempt, we went a very bizarre, indirect route, with several wrong turns along the way. In fairness, as a glance at a map shows, Montpellier is a maze. It's easy to go wrong.

Living area, Montpellier apartment

That evening, I was in the middle of downloading proper TomTom maps, for which I had paid, and downloading programs from the BBC site to watch later, and trying to talk to Caitlin on Skype, when the Internet, poof, disappeared. We couldn't get it back that night, which meant we had no Netflix (which we've been watching here), no GPS for the drive to Nimes the next day, and most importantly in retrospect, no GPS for the drive back into Montpellier. (Wait for it.)

On Friday, we got moving in good time and walked down to the navette stop by a route that wasn't the most direct, but which we knew, and knew would get us there, only to discover we had read the schedule wrong. The buses didn't leave every 15 minutes as we thought, they took 15 minutes to get out to the airport. They left, in fact, every hour. And we had just missed one. So we had to cool our heels in the lobby of the Olympic pool for half an hour.

Getting the car, a cute little Fiat bug, at the airport was no problem. We had hoped, however, that we might be able to get email, and maybe even download the TomTom maps, over the airport Wi-Fi system while we were there. I assumed it would be free, as it is now at many airports. It isn't at the Montpellier airport. Rather than pay for the service, we drove off with just a map. Scary.

By this time, it was barely 1 o'clock, and Caitlin's flight wasn't due until 6. Nimes is less than an hour from Montpellier. We had decided to do some sightseeing to fill in the time, and settled on Aigues-Mortes, a town in the marshy Petite Camargue area near the sea. Along the way, driving through typically flat Camargues landscapes, with etangs, saltwater lagoons, on either side, we saw some of the famous wild white Camargues horses. And a little further on, we spotted some pink flamingos.

Aigues-Mortes

Aigues-Mortes

Aigues-Mortes, the place of dead waters (referring to the surrounding salt flats), is known for its perfectly intact medieval walls. It's pretty cool-looking. We found a cute bistro just inside the gates for lunch: very crowded, long tables in a narrow little room. (Steak frites and wine for both of us, Gail.) The town is attractive: narrow medieval streets, a lovely main square, with nice old buildings and the ubiquitious arms-raised-to-the-sky plane trees. I'm sure it's gorgeous in the summer, but on this day, it was dead as a door nail and bone-chillingly cold. We persevered for a half  hour or so, dipping briefly into an austere little church with brilliant modernist stained glass - if anything, colder inside than outside - and then gave in and went back to the car.

Aigues-Mortes

Aigues-Mortes

We drove on to Nimes and found the airport. It may not be the best run airport in the world. For example, we followed signs to the parking lot and, after turning into a narrow, one-way driveway, came to a main entrance with a huge sign reading, "Access Interdit" (entry prohibited.) Huh!? We ignored it and drove into a parking garage. It was apparently undergoing renovations, although there was no sign of this, aside from the parking spaces on the lower level being blocked off with plastic tape. The locals were ignoring it and parking there anyway. Being (mostly) law-abiding, we went up to the top level.

Then in the terminal building - a single room for Arrivals and Departures - the washrooms were through an entranceway with a sign beside it saying that only authorized personnel could enter. But these were the only washrooms. Again, nobody was paying attention to the sign.

We were established in the lounge almost an hour before flight arrival time. Things started getting better here: the Wi-fi hotspot was free, and surprisingly fast. We downloaded our mail and newspapers and sat reading while we waited. Caitlin arrived on time and cheerful, and off we went back to Montpellier. The drive, along the A9 expressway, was quick and easy, but did cost us over €3 in tolls. The problems started when we hit the Montpellier city limits.

Go back and read the part about us getting lost walking to the airport shuttle bus stop, and you can guess what happened. It took us longer to find our way to our apartment through the rabbit's warren of one-way streets in Montpellier than it had taken us to come the 40-odd clicks from Nimes - over an hour. At one point, we drove by mistake into a parking garage. Luckily, we weren't charged when we u-turned and drove right back out. At another point, we were three blocks from home, failed to make a needed turn and ended up having to drive around for another 20 minutes.

To park in our street - we have a spot blocked by a heavy chain to prevent interlopers using it - we had to first drive down a short pedestrian street, barricaded with bollards that recess into the ground when you wave a smart card at the little control point. We had no idea if this would work - the bollards for some reason were down when Gilles drove us in. He just told us about it and gave us the card. It worked. Whew! Now, to find the key for the padlock on the chain...

The day was further redeemed by a very pleasant meal at a little bistro near our place, up the main pedestrian shopping street and in towards the cathedral. And so endeth the first and only bad patch in our sojourn here, or so I devoutly hope. And, really, it wasn't that bad. Today (Sunday - more about the weekend next post), it's sunny and supposed to go up to 12C.