Narbonne

After discovering yesterday that there really isn’t a lot to see or do in Narbonne, we are treating today as a rest day before hitting Spain tomorrow. So after a lazy lie in we wandered out to walk some of the streets we didn’t explore yesterday before heading to Les Halles, the food market for lunch.

Narbonne is an interesting town - it has all the “right” elements we so love in a smaller town but for some reason it is just missing “the vibe”. I’m not even sure how to put it into words. There is no graffiti, no rubbish on the streets, there are some pretty colourful buildings, a canal and some interesting Roman history but it is missing the buzz and we are really not sure what it is.

We did however enjoy our lunch in the food market today. It is sometimes a bit confronting trying to work out where to eat when a place is jammed packed with locals and we don’t speak the language. Thankfully Brad did some research last night so we were a bit better prepared and ready to give it a go. We chose to eat at Chez Fourmi. With their butcher counter just across the aisle from their “restaurant”, we knew the food would be fresh. Brad decided to be brave and had a horse meat steak for lunch while I had a grilled chicken breast. Served with their home made mushroom sauce, salad and fries it was a very delicious lunch. Even better was the €2 glasses of white wine and they weren’t stingy with the pour. It was our cheapest “restaurant” meal so far and the food and the vibe was fantastic.

This sort of place would never be allowed in Australia with all our food safety and hygiene laws. The food hall had stalls selling seafood, meats, fruit and veg, mixed in with stalls selling pre-made foods, bakeries and restaurants. Watching the cook at the restaurant next to us shouting his order with a megaphone to the butcher across from him, to the butcher cutting and wrapping the meat to then throw it across the crowd to the cook was very amusing. It was a fun and interesting place to have our last lunch in Narbonne.Read more