Montpellier!! I almost forgot that we stayed in this city last summer on our trip back to Spain.
On these summer trips when we come back to the Iberian Peninsula after visiting our families, we always spend one day in Italy and the other in France. The South of France, to be exact, and we try to make it a different place every year, so we get to know more cities.
It was already the end of August and as soon as we got back we were very busy in our search for a new home. I guess that's why I simply forgot to share this visit to Montpellier with you.
However, Hive is fantastic in many ways because while reading a post last night by user Enraizar, I was looking for a picture from another French city where we were a few years ago (unfortunately, I deleted it and couldn't find the picture in question) and stumbled upon these photos in my phone. What is this? My goodness, when were we there? Ah, yes, summer 2024 and the city... it took me a few moments to remember and go back a few months in my mind. Oh yes, that's when I walked with my son in the Antigone district of this French city, Montpellier.
Due to fatigue and a headache, my husband stayed at the hotel where we were staying, near the river Lez. My son and I were adventurous and went to see some French sights, but you see the surprises - this district is more like Ancient Greece, built nowadays. I don't know, it's a very strange mix of nature, a river, huge new buildings, Greek statues and people speaking French around you. See for yourself.
First, we crossed the Lez River, which you can walk or cycle along on these little paths. Temperature, 29 degrees Celsius. Not that bad for a hot summer day. A little boy was also enjoying his afternoon, fishing in this river... but there was a lot of grass there, I assume it is very shallow water. I think he had more pigeons around him than fish in the bag.
When we crossed the water, we found ourselves in that neighbourhood called Antigone.
There was a huge semicircular building that stood in front of us. These are the two parts of the residential building, it has mirror windows (some were open, people are living there actually) and a big green area "inside" this circle. I have taken a screenshot from Google Maps so you can see how the birds see it while they are flying above.
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screenshot from Google maps
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At the end of this square in front of the circular building, we see a statue - The Victory of Samothrace.
It symbolises the goddess Nike landing on a victorious ship and was originally sculpted in high-quality marble. It is over 5 metres high. What you see here on the Esplanade de l'Europe in Montpellier is just a reproduction of this goddess, made in resin.
If you saw the screenshot from the map, you can notice a quite symmetrical pattern in the buildings. We walked through the middle and these neoclassical, semicircular buildings were surrounding us. The sun was playing hide and seek, passing above and under the arches.
A warm summer afternoon in France - who would like to take a bath in a fountain? I won't, but these sculptures surely did it.
We arrived at the shopping mall Polygone and this was the point where we turned back. We were also searching to buy and take away dinner, so we looked around in the restaurants. But, we found mainly statues. Well, replicas of famous statues. 😉
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Apollo Belvedere
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Discobolus
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Dionysus
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We stumbled upon some street art too. Wouldn't know how to explain what they are... little guys with big eyes in different colours? 😂
The artist @ numpictureshow also left his works here and there...
Already going back to our hotel room, we crossed again the river and these sunset colours bathed the buildings we were seeing. Finally, we found a place where to buy our dinner and headed back to consume it and rest.
Montepllier's other historic places were not visited this time by us; it was interesting (or strange?) enough to walk around in this neighbourhood, though maybe next time we stop again here and see more of this city.
