A fine and fancy ramble to the zoo

The days are beginning to run together a bit here. Ennui sets in if we're not careful. We had to shake ourselves out of the doldrums, and did it this week by planning lots of activities, including two day trips, both hugely successful.

The weather has been so-so: at least some sun most days, but lots of cloud too, and too much wind for our liking. We're in the middle of a windy stretch right now. Temps in the mid- to high teens, with a couple of lovely days up over 20 (and little wind.) Luckily, those were the days of our outings.

By Saturday, Karen was fully recovered from her "episode" of the day of our bus trip to Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert. She now feels certain it was a migraine that got out of hand because she failed to nip it in the bud, as she usually does, with Tylenol. Maybe it was aggravated a bit by motion sickness too. Anyway, she was fine on Saturday, a drizzly day, and we walked over to the market at the aquaduct - Les Arches, or the hoops.

It's the best market yet, the biggest for sure, with lots of interesting stalls selling mouth-watering stuff. The vendors set up under the arches in a long street of booths. We bought some lovely creamy Brebis (sheep) cheese made in the Pyrenees, from a friendly, cheerful woman at a small booth. We'll go back to this market (in fact did go back). It's no further than the Sunday market near Antigone, and bigger and more interesting.

Near St. Roch train station

We continue to walk the city, revisiting favourite haunts and exploring new. I still love the architecture in Antigone, the big urban public-private development project of the 1970s through 1990s just east of the centre: neo-neo-classical, Caitlin called it.

And I seem to have a bit of a photographic obsession with the Cathédral de Saint-Pierre. It's partly the setting, in a trough of surrounding low hills, so that the city seems to cluster - very tightly, almost claustrophobically, round it. It's difficult in fact to get far enough away for a really good view. And then there are the massive pillars on the front porch. They remind me of the towers in a toy castle.

On Wednesday, we visited Musée Atger, the city's oldest museum, and one of its best kept secrets. It houses a fabulous collection of old master drawings in a little suite of rooms on the flirst floor of the main Faculty of Medicine building (right beside the aforementioned cathedral). It's only open a few days a week in the afternoon.

The pictures were collected by a local entrepreneur and art lover, Xavier Atger, in the 18th century. He donated the collection to the Faculty of Medicine, with the proviso that it always be made available to view. The Faculty has added to the collection, but the core of it is Atger's legacy. Entry is free.

Musée Atger

Fragonard, Postillion

You have to buzz at the door. The caretaker lets you in and explains where everything is and then leaves you to it. The drawings are in cupboards on wooden leaves that fold out so you can see front and back - 20 to 25 drawings per cupboard. We had the place to ourselves for much of the time we were there. We spent over an hour browsing. Highlights for me included the works by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), some very nice ones by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) and a Titian.

On Thursday, we decided to revive a discarded plan to visit La Grande Motte, a planned beach resort built in the 1960s and 1970s just east of Montpellier in the Petit Camargue. It would mean taking a bus again, but Karen was sure she could handle it with the help of some Gravol before we set out. It was a shorter ride with no hill climbing. We took the tram out to Place de France at Odysseum and caught the bus from there.

A great crowd of British school kids (well, 15) got on the bus at the same time - all boys about 13 or 14 - led by a frazzled teacher the boys and other chaperones referred to as Madame. When she spoke French, she had what sounded to us like quite a nice accent; when she spoke English, not so much - east London, I think. They got off at a nearer beach town, but caught the same bus as us back to the city later in the day.

La Grande Motte

The appeal of La Grande Motte - especially on an early spring day - is the architecture. This was another from-the-ground-up planned architectural project of a kind the French (Europeans in general maybe) go for. (The influence of socialism and communism, perhaps?) There was apparently virtually nothing here before the project started. Today, it's a small city of about 10,000 and one of the most popular seaside resorts in France with over two million visitors a year.

La Grande Motte

This project was led by an architect named Jean Balladur, who was unheard of before La Grande Motte, but justly famous (at least in architecture circles) after it. He was inspired by the pyramids of Mexico and the modernist architecture of Brazil, especially the work of Oscar Niemeyer. Everything was planned to the nth degree. Even the little church is in the modernist style.

The place is altogether fantastic. Along the beach and back from it, you have these crazy pyramidal apartment buildings. Others are low rise and curvilinear. Still others reminded me a bit of Habitat at the Expo 67. Then there is the huge marina with over 1,300 berths. The aggregate value of the boats berthed here - some as large as 30 foot - must run into the tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions.

Karen and I walked and walked and walked, over two hours with frequent stops for photography. It was a gorgeous sunny day with temperatures up over 20C. We ended up back at the main highway into town where we found a bus stop, waited for 20 minutes and caught the same bus going back the other way to Montpellier.

A good day: lots of pics. And no motion sickness or migraines.

So we were on a roll and decided to take another bus ride the next day, this time within Montpellier, to the zoo. It's in the northeast corner of the city, an area also referred to as the forest of Montpellier. We had to take a tram part of the way, then a city bus up the hill a couple of clicks to the zoo which is near some of the more suburban parts of the University of Montpellier campus.

Karen generally doesn't like zoos because she feels the animals are often unhappy, if not exactly mistreated. I'm of two minds. We have seen obviously disturbed and deeply bored and frustrated animals, often engaging in obsessive-compulsive behaviours: big cats pacing relentlessly, and in one memorable case, an elephant at the Toronto Zoo, standing with head down, obsessively kicking at a tree. I understand the arguments against and sometimes feel uncomfortable with zoos, but they also play an important role in fostering appreciation of bio-diversity, and preserving species that might otherwise be lost.

First bear: 'Psst! Don't look, but look up there, on the platform. Lunch! See the guy with the camera? Now look to his left. A tasty-looking morsel, eh? Yum, yum."

In any case, this zoo is known for its green and generally forward-thinking practices. It's a sprawling, very natural site, quite wild in places, with over 11 kilometers of trails, many not even paved. Few of the animals are in anything you could call a cage, and many have enough room and cover that they can hide if they want. The leopard, the only big cat on view this day, stalked away when we approached his compound and flopped among some bushes where he was difficult to see and impossible to photograph (rats). The animals generally looked healthy. I don't know about happy.

We took a fresh baguette and cheese and ham and apples and cruditées, and a little 25cl bottle of vino, and had a picnic by the camels. There are picnic tables all through the park. It's also a popular place for joggers. Did I mention that admission is free?

It was another good day. I had lots of fun trying to get portraits of the animals. The camels were the best subjects, such goofy looking dudes. It helped that a little cluster of Italian teenagers came along and called out to the camels and got one to come over closer to the viewing platform. The emus, also quite ridiculous looking, were co-operative as well.

On Saturday, we went back to the Arches market and bought some delicious vegetarian fritters (galettes) for lunch, more of the Brebis cheese, greens, etc. There was quite a good gypsy jazz combo playing. Sunday was mostly dull and windy, but we did get out for a walk in the old city.