Beach Break: Sete for two days.

Two days in Sete: 31st of May and 1st of June.

Our two days here, always intended as a mini 'beach break' in the midst of the Birdling Adventure Whirlwind Trip, can be summed up up fairly easily:

Temperature 27 – 30 degrees from 10am - 8pm

Beaches

Amazing food.

Sunburn (and gradually expanding waistlines).

Day One Photos:

After twenty minutes or so of walking in the very hot sun, we found the beach!

Sparkly Sand.

Obligatory bikini photo. I was actually pretty modestly attired by comparison on the beach.

Also, on the beach it was plain that we weren't from around these parts: we were so, so pasty white compaired to everyone else! At least by the end of the two days I had a tan that took the edge off of the refectiveness of my skin!

If you ask Greg about the beaches in Sete eventually he will no doubt mention 'boobies'. There were quite a few pairs of boobies laying about.

After a successful beach visit, lunch by the canal on the way home was in order, and the 'menus' were proving a great option - with three courses for a set price. 

That brownie... I am still not over that brownie...

After a shower + change, the sun was setting when we ventured out again for dinner...

Sete was also where we started ordering bottles of wine with dinner. At first confused by the measurements in centiltres rather than millillitres, the first night we ended up with a full 750ml bottle of wine with tea which was quite a lot to drink after a long day in the sun! We have it sussed now though :)

We managed to order wine for the first time!

A bit of Italy while in France. It's only a few hours away by train, so why not?

So much pretty on the way home!

The canal running through the town made for pretty viewing, both during the day and at night.

Day Two, more of the same!
 

We had lovely meals and some more language adventures. I even managed to order two sandwiches and two pain au chocolats over the counter successfully without having to point. When I hugged the paper bag full of goodies to my chest and grinned broadly at Greg over our French food booty, the lady behind the counter cracked up.

I was feeling very pleased that I had ordered our lunch over the counter entirely in French!

After this we caught the bus to the beach successfully so we didn't have to walk for ages!

There is the bus story... on the first day we walked to the beach but it was over an hour in the hot sun and then the walk back home after was especially poos. So the next day we successfully navigated the bus – but only just, and thanks to some random help from a chap with no english. We were standing at the bus stop that we though would take us home, debating about whether or not it was the right one. A man approached us, asking questions from the tone of voice. We made out that he was asking us in German, if we spoke German, and said no english. He nodded then proceeded to point at the bus sign and talk to us in French. Protests that we didn't understand were politely ignored, with more insistent pointing and talking. We couldn't figure out if he wanted to know something or was trying to tell us something. We took out our map with the bus map on it and he was pointing along the map. Eventually we decided he was trying to tell us we were at the wrong stop. When I finally pointed on the map to where our hotel was (where we were trying to go) he said very clearly “Le bus numbere trois”. We were at the stop for the number 9 bus, not the number 3 bus... Hoping that we had understood him correctly we thanked him and headed off to a number 3 stop. It got us home at least! (We actually had the same thing happen to us just when we were standing near a station the day before, a nice French man tried to help us even though were just looking at the timetable to see how it al worked and we couldnt' understand a word he was saying.) The friendly French seem generally convinced that if they talk French at you for long enough eventually you'll just magically learn their language and understand. As long as they don't mind being patient and wasting their time I'm happy to be a part of the madness!

Greg takes a dip.

As we left after 5pm on a Friday evening, the beach was still busy and heaps of people were arriving after work/school/uni to relax. Why not when the temperature is still high 20s and the sun won't go down for hours?

Later on, a last chance dinner by the canal...

Being a seaside village, we had lots of yummy fish to eat too. Although in one restaurant Greg spent a large amount of time goggling at the couple behind us who had orderd the 75 euro two-tiered seafood platter. That thing was massive!

Seafood for tea! Doing things right in a seaside town!

 \

Greg knew how to recognise Ile Flotantte on the menu by now! Me, I had by now adopted a strategy of ordering whatever had "chocolat" in the name. Never once let me down!

So basically, Sete was the holiday from our holiday that we needed. We didn't do a single 'sight-seeing' activity. Just ate, walked around, and lay on the beach for hours. It was lovely. Sete is a beautiful town. It was more touristy than Narbonne but not too bad, and also most of the tourists seemed to be people from other parts of France, with some Spanish and Italians in the mix. So as English speakers we continued to be a novelty this early in the season. There was also one street we dubbed “Turkish Street” due to it's predominance of Kebab shops and bars and groups of apparently Turkish men (but could have been Lebanese or otherwise, who could tell? All their signage was still in French) hanging around all day drinking tea... just like in Turkey (and just like in Turkey, not a woman in sight. Where do they hide their women, I ask?).

All in all it was everything that I had hoped for when I had booked the place, thinking that at this point in the trip we might need a wee break! We even got some laundry done (and turned our hotel room into a Chinese laundry for the two days).

And that's the update!