Montpellier and le Cirque de Mourèze

Montpellier and le Cirque de Mourèze

One style of travelling is to not make any plans and just see where the wind takes you. At the other extreme, there is planning everything down to a tee months in advance. I would place myself in the latter category, but with elements of the former. For instance, travel destinations are typically chosen many months in advance and planned out carefully, and likewise as soon as it is possible to purchase train tickets, they will be purchased. This has the benefit of saving a lot of money, but also gives you the “looking forward to an adventure” sensation. However during the adventure, we are often flying by the seat of our pants. So sometime during autumn, a mid-winter trip to the south of France was booked with the assumption being that we would escape the freeze of the north. As we were saving some other destinations in the south until spring/summer, we chose a location with equal length train trips from Geneva and Paris and ended up with Montpellier. When the time arrived, as the winter had been extremely mild, the “escape” was not to be the jealously-inducing weekend that we expected, but it would be a welcome adventure nonetheless. The region has some amazing landscape, so we decided to spend half our time out and about, and the other half exploring the city.

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In and around Paris

In and around Paris

Christmas had arrived, however our plans to go away over the break had been thwarted and pushed back until the New Year, so it was holiday time and we were in Paris. To make the most of the time, we organised a set of day trips which had been on my itinerary for a while. Two excursions were within the city, whilst the other three were a bit further afield.

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Alsace

Alsace

With the Christmas period come the Christmas markets. The Germanic tradition of selling local arts and crafts, notably toys has slowly and surely become a commercial exploit. Appearing in every city and primarily selling bulk manufactured goods or food, they have been losing their charm. Some regions have been banning markets or limiting what can be sold in an attempt to ameliorate the situation, most notably limiting the number of food and drink vendors, with certain markets being comprised solely of mulled wine vendors.

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La fête des lumières

La fête des lumières

The coming of December brings not only much cold weather, but also the year’s shortest days. On the 8th of December, Lyon celebrates la fête des lumières (the festival of lights), a colourful and imaginative use of lights decorating the city. The festival has its roots in the celebration of Mary, who was the “saviour” of the town during an outbreak of the plague in 1643. The festival as it is now known came about after a planned celebration of the Immaculate Conception. Grand festivities had been planned as well as more localised celebrations as each individual illuminated the façade of their home. However, on the morning of the celebration, a large thunderstorm hit the town and the master of ceremonies decided to delay the event until the following weekend. The storm dispersed throughout the day and despite the official festival being delayed, the population of the town spontaneously lit up their houses and celebrated in the streets.

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Lucerne

Lucerne

With winter slowly making its impression, the day to day life slowly evolves to follow suit. I find people here are much more personable in the winter – not to mention the arrival of rich meals and all things chocolate are very welcome additions. In an attempt to escape the permanent grey weather (which seems to call Paris home from November until March) we headed to the picturesque town of Lucerne in central Switzerland. Founded somewhere around 750 and gaining prominence in the mid-1400s, the town is one of the older cities in Switzerland and this, combined with being perched on the Vierwaldstättersee (the fourth largest lake in Switzerland) with the Alps rising sharply just to the south, make it one of the most visited towns in Switzerland.

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