Place Francis Ponge

A lot happened today, but it wasn’t walking or picturesque, in fact my legs are suffering from not enough exercise! But we got the 10 am bus from Lodève to Montpellier, it took an hour, stopping and picking up and dropping off people, not an express…a locale…and for the 2 of us, with an extra for day passes on the tram in Montpellier, it cost €6.

The tram pass was necessary as the bus terminates at the end of the tram line 1, which we took when walking out of walking out of Montpellier last week, so we are experts at this line, and caught it back to the stop, Comédie, near our hotel, which is in the centre and also near the railway station. Luckily, at 11.30 our hotel (another Ibis) was able to check us in with room ready, so we dropped our bags, for which we are now responsible until we do our Spanish camino next week, and got back on the tram to the other end of the line where there is a big rather soulless mall, but which has an Apple Store!!

And we bought me an iPhone!!! It is a modest one, as the insurance money is paying for what we still owed of the one stolen (and the one before), and it hasn’t got as good a camera as before, but it is now all downloaded with everything and it feels so good, except I am very scared of carrying it round, and will not have it on me in cities at all…I even felt a bit nervous here in Montpellier, and certainly will leave it safely locked up in Barcelona, Madrid and Paris…but it will be wonderful to be able to take photos on the camino in Spain. Amr may look less anguished, (please note Peter and Simon!) as all photos of him so far have been taken by me on his phone when he is worried that I will drop, break or lose it!!! So now hopefully he will relax…and also getting him to stop for a photo was a problem…

So all that took most of the afternoon. We had to do another trip back to the hotel before sealing the deal with Apple to get Amr’s passport for the tax free receipt, and we stayed in the Apple Store while it downloaded using their strong wifi, meanwhile attending a lesson there on drawing on an iPad, with a special app…So Amr was happy, and I was happy that he was happy, but I kept being distracted when the new phone kept asking questions that I needed help with! But all got completed, even pairing it with my Apple Watch, though I have lost all the wonderful stats of the last week’s walk.

After that we stopped for a coffee/chocolate and pretzels, much needed as we had forgotten to eat…then checked with Orange about getting a SIM for a month, but not worth it was their advice..went back to hotel, drew breath and went to the favourite square to sit and have a drink which we did, but still rather windy and cold for comfort, and we decided to eat at 7 and got into the Italian we had enjoyed last visit, the luckily got in, just, it was soon totally buzzing. The only photos are taken by MY phone, of our spacious room, and Amr eating pizza!Read more