Day 303, Driving rom Montpellier to Uzes
Cooler, rainy days have left us content to be inside. We left a sleepy, off-season Pezenas yesterday, and drove toward the larger city of Montpellier. We booked what we thought was a mid-sized bed and breakfast, but ended up being a petite bed and breakfast of only one room, in the attic of a home in a residential neighborhood.
Here is the view from our window.
Most of the bed and breakfasts we’ve been to have been great, and this one was no different. You are staying in someone’s home, so the owner’s personal style and idiosyncrasies are bound to show. This home was no different. The room ran the entire length of the house and was a finished attic. It was certainly spacious and had three different sleeping nooks. The couple didn’t know any English and complimented Cali on her French.
On entering the apartment they explained that everything is from Madagascar. In the girl’s room was a large photo of an extremely provocatively posed topless woman from Madagascar, which I can’t imagine would have been appreciated by every bed and breakfast guest, though I could be wrong. We are in France, after all. Naked photos or art is not one of the amenity options listed in Bookit.com. All part of the unpredictable b&b experience. This place was covered in stickies and signs indicating what you should and shouldn’t do. Instructions in a new place are often helpful, but usually put into a book where one can read them over and then relax. Here, I felt like a small child whose mom had left instructions everywhere. On the microwave it was, “Be careful of spattering,” and “plastic can melt.” There were five signs telling you not to smoke, and two more saying if you open the window turn off the air conditioner or heater. Helpful stickies for me would have been, “Stop hitting your head on this beam, it has become tiresome,” or “Stop coming in the bathroom to go to the toilet, it’s in some other room.”
The great breakfast with homemade baking, and huge coffee cups cancelled out all the bossy, common sense stickies. 
We drove an hour to Uzes for market day. It has been raining on and off for days. But when we drove into Uzes, the sun started shining. Too easy a metaphor for how we feel about this town that’s always charmed us.
We have history here. This part of Southern France is Paul’s favorite part in the world. Uzes is one of our favorite towns in Paul’s favorite part of the world. Here are some old snaps from when we were here in 2009.
Regardless of the weather, the sun is always shining it Uzes. Market day comes on Wednesdays and Saturdays. With plentiful sidewalk cafes under beautiful tree-canopied streets, there is a relaxed cafe atmosphere of coffee, dogs, people walking with their market baskets. People don’t walk, they stroll; they don’t drink, they sip; they don’t wait, they linger. Even the dogs don’t seem to have a busy agenda. It’s a feeling we haven’t seen duplicated in many of the other places we’ve visited.
Even slightly chilly weather doesn’t keep people inside. Southern France has a certain feeling, and Uzes distills it into one quaint town. Uzes was always a highlight of our summer visits to France, but have never stayed in town, only close-by. We decided to stay in Uzes for 10 days. We are excited to visit some of our favorite restaurants and enjoy the market repeatedly, by simply stepping out of our door.
You can see here that the trees are budding. Imagine what the square looks like when there is a canopy of green.
Note the yellow blankets at the cafe tables. Every self-respecting cafe offers these for the chilly days.
Many Spring flowers and plants are for sale at the market.
Like many others, probably should have taken advantage of this rare opportunity (or maybe not so rare), to buy wine from a nun.
Like Tokyo, there are dogs everywhere, but with fewer sweaters.
Don’t forget the antiques. The French never forget the antiques.
Our building is in the city center, a block from the market square. This is our street.
Since we book our apartments online, we are delighted when the place exceeds our expectations. Some apartments, like in Hong Kong, end up feeling much smaller than the pictures, while others, like this apartment, feels much bigger than the pictures. We like it when that happens, real life surpassing what’s portrayed in pictures.
First of all, we love our view of Uzes from our window.
Next, we love the wifi speed, which is tested practically the minute we walk through the door. We always ask about the speed before we book a place, and we make sure when we arrive that the girls will be able to do their online school work (and that I can amuse myself with Netflix).
In this apartment, like many other places we’ve stayed, we played find the toilet. In this apartment the bathroom, by which I literally mean the room you bathe in, was amazingly appointed and posh…while the toilet was tucked away in the back corner of the laundry room. We couldn’t find it initially. This is the opposite of the bathroom in Turkey where the shower was practically above the toilet.
We like robes, they make us feel fancy.
We are excited about this functional kitchen WITH a coffee maker! We have lots of meals lined up that we want to cook, and already have our Costa Rican coffee ready. It’s the little things that aren’t so little.
When the girls were younger we used to have ravioli for our first meal when we got to France, not because it was fancy, but because it came out of a can and was an instant meal along with a baguette and some cheese. Somewhere along the line it became a tradition. So tonight, we had ravioli. Luckily they now make it in a vegetarian form for Cali.
We’ve never been in Uzes at night. It’s beautiful.
