Whenever possible we like to break long journeys into smaller pieces. Rather than spending eight hours on a train we prefer to stop in the middle. Two four hour journeys aren’t nearly so bad, especially if you get to discover a new place in between. Since we had a couple days to spare between our stay in Cannes and our visit with my brother John and his family in Barcelona, we decided to make a stop smack in the middle. And that brings us to Montpellier, the vibrant capital of the French region of Languedoc-Roussillon.

Montpellier feels like a young town, with lively streets and bustling squares full of bars and restaurants. It’s been a college town since the founding of the University of Montpellier in 1160 — one of the oldest universities in the world. It is also reported to be the fastest growing city in France over the past quarter century.

It’s been a nice place to hang out for a brief couple of days while we got a few practical things done — shopping for toiletries, getting Jim a haircut, and doing a bit of travel research. We also visited a nice botanical garden, the Jardin des Plantes, and enjoyed a couple great meals in those lively Montpellier squares.

But this morning we are more excited than usual to board our next train. Because this time we are headed to one of our favorite places on earth — Barcelona!

We’ve just wrapped up five days in Cannes, mostly on the beach. There’s not a lot to talk about when much of the day is spent sitting on a chair on the beach. Sun, reading, cooling off in the water … that’s about it.

It’s worth noting, though, that Cannes is a strange place. It’s the only place I can think of where you honestly see Rolls Royces being driven around, along with a lot of other terribly expensive cars. Yachts, lots of yachts. You see – in fact, we sat right behind one – apparently very rich old ladies on the beach wearing much, much less than you wish they were, with their aides sitting in a chair immediately next to them. The aide’s job is to continually adjust the umbrella so that the sun is hitting just where she wants it but not in her eyes. And readjust the towel she’s lying on if it gets a little bunched up. And move the beach chair – with the old lady still lying in it – as the sun moves throughout the day. You can spend a fortune renting chairs and umbrellas on the beach and can easily spend $200 for lunch. But you can also stumble onto – as we did – small local restaurants that serve fantastic food at very reasonable prices. A strange mix of very rich and beautiful with very reasonable and normal.

There were a couple interesting side trips. Our first full day there we drove up into Mons, a tiny hilltop town in the foothills of the Alps, where my former assistant in the VAN office was playing in a pre-wedding concert. Erica is the niece of an old college friend of Mark’s (which is how we met her), who was also there along with his partner and mother. The concert was great, the town was beautiful, and it was great fun to have dinner afterwards with the whole family.

(Note: Mark & I remain traumatized by cars. We had to rent a car to get to Mons and that whole process of driving out of the city, up into the hills, back down and into the city, getting gas, returning the car … traumatic. We’ve been carless since 2008 and our freakish terror of cars is just getting worse.)

And then two days later, while Erica was at the wedding, Mark & I took a train up to Nice to have dinner with David, Mike, and Florence. Again great fun to see old friends and spend an evening in a pretty cool city.

So that’s it. Beach, sun, some old friends, and a fun concert. Now it’s off to Montpellier for two days, just to break up the trip to Barcelona where we’re going to spend a week with Mark’s brother and his family.