A morning in Montpellier

After breakfast I wandered around the streets of Montpellier - every little lane was more charming than the next, and I had fun exploring Montpellier with my camera. It is a beautiful city, and not too large, so I could find my way around without a map. It was clean with beautiful buildings, and everyone was very friendly. So after my horrible day yesterday this beautiful city restored my faith in the French! I sat in this quiet square and had a coffee, it is right next to a beautiful cathedral. It was so quiet too, so it was very calming just sitting there enjoying the peace. I have also added an extra of a charming little lane that I wandered through.

It was a warm day and by lunch time I was rather hot, so I went back to the hotel to get my bags and to get a taxi out to the airport. There is a major taxi rank just at the back of the hotel, and when I got there there was a queue and not a singe taxi in sight. Standing in the full sunlight with heat radiating off the walls I thought I would faint it was so hot, so I was very grateful when the man ahead of me in the queue asked where I was going and when we realised that we were both going to the airport we decided to share a taxi. I might have been standing there for another 15 minutes waiting for the next one to arrive.

At the airport I met the rest of my group - there are only 7 of us, although one more person is flying in from Spain tonight. Today is a relaxing day, we are about to go into the town of Saintes Marie de la Mer to explore and have supper, but then from tomorrow onwards it will be very busy so I hope I have time to blip. We will be out at dawn photographing the horses, and after we get back to the hotel for a late breakfast we will head out again to the ornithological park to photograph the flamingoes, herons and egrets. Then after that we go back out again to photograph the horses at dusk. These horses roam free so the gardians (Camargue cowboys) have to determine where they are and round them up to drive them past us photographers. It is not really possible to photograph the herds of horses without assistance from the gardians. While we are here we will also be photographing the black bulls, although because they are very wild and aggressive we do so from the elevated position of the back of a truck so as to be out of their way!

Back home, Luke finished university exams today and is probably sitting in a pub somewhere right now, and Adam only started his exams today. Thomas has half term break and will have to be studying for end of year school exams.