Bumming around Montpellier

With Caitlin gone back to England, and Shelley with her head down, working in Aix, Karen and I have been a bit at loose ends the last few days. What do we do now? Well, we explore the city is what we do, and we have been.

Tuesday was cleaning day, plus we were bagged from a bad night's sleep, but we still got out for a long-ish walk in the afternoon. We meandered among the narrow streets in the Ecusson, the old medieval centre, I could spend hours in there. We found ourselves back at the church of Saint Roche where the doors were open, an unusual occurrence apparently.

Across from Saint Roche church

As we were entering, we were accosted, rudely, by two supposedly hearing-handicapped guys with a sign-our-petition scam, a pretext for begging. Caitlin and I had a run-in with these very insistent dudes earlier and got as far as signing our names before realizing they were asking us to pledge a donation as well. When we waved them away this time, they charged ahead of us into the church and started approaching other visitors.

One of the church caretakers bustled over in high dudgeon and asked if we had given them any money. I thought she was asking us for money to enter the church at first, but no. I'm not sure why she asked. Maybe she was going to reprimand us for giving in to them, or she was going to offer to try and get our money back. In any case, she shooed the beggars out. They came flouncing back down the nave past us and waved their hands in our faces as some kind of protest or joke.

The church is remarkable for its lovely stained glass: a huge arched window over the altar in deep blues, depicting Jesus with a lamb of God in front of what looks like a castle, but may be the gates of Jerusalem, and a rose window over the front door in unusual orange-y pink hues.

Saint Roche church

Montpellier, Ecusson

There is a big arts festival starting here soon, Festival Tompisme. It appears to be mostly about digital media and runs to nightclub DJ performances and a live video link with the South by Southwest Festival in Austin TX - which I guess is also on right now. We don't think there's much in it for us, but we'll investigate further. In any case, on one little street, a couple was stringing up bright coloured pennants - really just scraps of fabric, but pretty. We assume this is something to do with the festival, but who knows?

Montpellier, Ecusson

Montpellier, Ecusson

On Wednesday, Karen had done some research on farmer's markets and wanted to do a mini-tour of the ones running on this day - one in Antigone, the big just-south-of-the-centre housing/office development I wrote about earlier, and one in the much less interesting Beaux Arts district just north of the Ecusson. It was lovely and sunny when we set out, but with a chilly breeze.

The market in Antigone was a good size, with maybe 30 booths set up in the square. Most, but not all, were food vendors who appeared to be selling fresh grown produce, local cheeses, nuts, preserves, meats. But there was also one selling beds! We bought some veg and a couple of apples of a variety we'd not heard of before - Pink Kiss - that were surprisingly inexpensive compared to the Pink Ladies we've been buying at the local Carrefour. They turned out to be very good too.

Montpellier, near Beaux Arts district

We walked on, through the edge of the old centre, to the other market, which was quite a bit smaller - maybe ten booths altogether. We did buy some garlic there from a little old lady who only had a small table and, we assume, had grown the garlic herself. By the time we got home, it had been a two-hour walk in total. Karen easily recorded her target 10,000 steps on the FitBit.

Late in the afternoon, we went out again, to the Pavillon Populaire, an exhibition space devoted to photography in the Esplanade Charles de Gaulle near Place de la Comédie - so a fairly short walk. The current show is a retrospective on the mid-century American photographer Aaron Siskind, mostly drawn from the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, which we visited two years ago.

This one is a terrific exhibit. I had long been aware of Siskind, but hadn't realized how influential his aesthetic has been on me. I was saying to Karen afterwards that practically every impulse I have as a photographer can be traced back to Siskind and his cohort of European-influenced American photographers. She saw the parallels too. Lots of grafitti shots, lots of abstracts, lots of architecture. Now, if I could only learn to take my pictures half as artfully. As we were leaving, I leafed through a book of the exhibit and was struck by how the reproductions in it really didn't do justice to the prints. They seem to glow with an inner light - like all good original art. I shall probably return, although the show is over on Sunday.

Aaron Siskind, Chicago, 1961

Today, Thursday, I was out in the morning on errands that took me through the Ecusson again. Such lovely little shops, often with handmade things, and always brilliantly presented.

Montpellier, Ecusson - look up!

In the afternoon, we took a walk along the bike path that we thought we would use to get to the river and the path to the sea. It took us down some very boring avenues. In the end we decided we'd ride through the centre and then through Antigone - less direct, but pleasanter. We're anxious to get the bikes out, but it's still a little chilly for biking - low double digits celsius, and only for a few hours in the afternoon - and Karen's needs some adjusting, which will require us to take it into a shop or buy a bike wrench.

The good news today. It looks like Shelley will join us here for the weekend. Woo-haw!