The Trip - Day 1

We had to catch our flight from London Luton Airport and the flight departed at 06:25 (the joys of budget airlines).  So we decided to stay in a hotel by the airport the night before and get a taxi in.  We found a good deal to stay a the travelodge.  It turns out that you get what you pay for and this wouldn't be the last time that we would find this out over the next few days.

The room was very basic, no telephone, no remote for the television, which would not have been so bad if all the buttons on the set itself actually worked.  It even came complete with a semi conscious drunk in the foyer.  The only plus was that it was relatively clean.

At 04:30 we got a taxi to the airport and checked in for our flight.  The kids were fantastic considering that they were dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night.  I wasn't too bad either!  Now the flight itself was... well.. you get what you pay for (lesson No. 2).  The plane was cheap, the food and drinks were not and they tried to sell you everything under the sun including the sun (but only the newspaper).  They also sold Hello magazines and scratch cards, cigarettes to phone cards.  In fact every 5 minutes they would make and announcement and parade a "must have" product down the isle.  In what must have been the most unwanted lineup of a fashion runway ever.  Still we came away without buying anything and only paying £6.00 each.

We arrived in a windy but quite warm Nimes around 09:30 and we were all doing quite well as the kids got a good sleep on the plane.  We collected our car after shelling out a 400euro deposit (which would take 10 working days to return after the hire) and headed down to Montpellier.  After we were on the road, it was straight forward getting down there as the roads were good and clear.  Getting around the old city of Montpellier wasn't quite so easy.  I was still a little nervous driving in France, especially in a city and it didn't help that I was in someone else's car.

We finally found a somewhat premium priced car park (although it was not that different to most city car parks) and we went exploring.  By this time it was getting towards noon and it was getting hot.  There we are mostly in winter clothes as this was all we had out of storage and we were feeling it.  We were looking in the shops for flip flops or sandals and some summer clothes but there was nothing.  Only winter coats and cold weather gear.


Now I have to say that I fell a little bit in love with Montpellier.  It is a wonderful city which is beautifully diverse, vibrant and buzzing community.  It is also very beautiful across both the old and new parts of the city, giving a real contrast.  This love however, did dissipate very quickly.  I would like to say that it was because the place stank or was really dirty, maybe even because of the abundance of criminals or tax officials.  But I can't because the truth is the simple fact that we could not afford to live there. Absolute bastards!

So we went to find our "Montpellier" hotel.  Armed with a road map (of the whole of France), and area name and a lot of hope and optimism we set off  What followed was a lot of heat, not a clue about where we were heading and even less patience from me.  However, we made it to our functional, clean and cheap hotel.  You get what you pay for (lesson No. 3).  Although the room was clean, there was still a feeling that you didnt actually want to touch anything. We found a bakery nearby where we got a pizza for dinner and a French stick which was made with wine, which we had for breakfast, afterall we were in France.

And so ended our brief if not emotional fling with Montpellier.

An update... Part One...

I must start this entry with an apology.  As you know, there has not been a update on this blog for some time now as for a while nothing happened and then all of a sudden too much happened which meant that there wasn't enough time to update.  So I will try my very best to update you with everything that has happened over the past few months.

Laura went to a French Property Show in London which initially looked like it was going to be really good.  However, after a long and hard journey getting there it turned out to be a little disappointing.  She did manage to find out some good information and get some contact about finances and legal issues.  But it was more about buying a property rather than renting one which is more what we are after right now.

Around the same time I found a good website which has long term rentals (http://www.immostreet.com/).  This became a really useful website as most of the other websites generally give you winter rentals, or rentals where the cost increases over the summer.

So after searching through the website we were able to narrow down a selection of properties which we wanted to have a look at.  All we had to do now was to take a trip over to France.  We started to look at different flights and trains, Hotels and B&B's.  Trying to cut the costs down and keep it to a reasonable price.  As you can imagine it is very easy to get a little carried away and before you know it the price is sky high.  I managed to get a good deal on the car hire with Europcar, which was harder than I thought it would be.  For a start some car hire companies charge over £50.00 to hire a single child seat which was something that we needed two of!

For the flights we ended up using Ryanair as they are by far the cheapest option.  The only problem is the amount of hoops that you have to jump through.  For example; if you want to take luggage you have to pay extra.  If you want to reserve a seat, you have to pay extra.  If you want to pay by any other means than prepaid Mastercard, you have to pay extra.  However, we did manage to get the flights for a very reasonable £6.00 per person/each way.  So all in all we paid just £76.00 for 2 adults, 1 child and 1 infant for return flight from London to the south of France (infants have a flat rate of £20 each way).

So flights booked, car booked and we had also booked into a Première Classe hotel in Montpellier for the first night. 

We are ready to go!