Our lovely friends in Marseille, Steph and Fred, gave us a wonderful gift for our wedding - a night on a riverboat on the
Canal du Midi. It was a wonderful weekend, like a second honeymoon. Neither Lorenzo nor I knew much about the Canal or Poilhes, a town of 500 inhabitants, before going so we were both quite excited to see this area.
We left early on Saturday which turned out to be quite a warm day luckily. Now you might say it's always warm down south were we are but even my Norwegian DNA have mutated and now find 18 degrees to be on the limit on the scale between cold and warm, so sweater weather. Going on the motorway it will take about 3 hours but we decided to go on the smaller roads and do some sightseeing on the way. In a village of which I can't remember the name we stopped to have lunch and the resturant was situated right beside a river giving us already a taste of what was to come.
Before getting to Poilhes however we stopped by Seth. I always heard that Seth is a beautiful seaside town but finally I wasn't very impressed. Don't get me wrong, there's a very nice port, very carachetristic but nothing more.
However the beaches just west of the town are absolutely gorgeous!! You might wonder why we didn't rather stop in Montpellier instead? Montpellier is really not far from Seth and that has been on my "to-visit" list forever but an afternoon is not enough time to explore that town. Soon Lorenzo needs to go there for work so I'll tag along and explore the town whilst he's doing his daily duties.
We arrived in Poilhes, situated between Béziers and Narbonne, around six o'clock in the afternoon while the daylight was at the most beautiful. And I fell in love with this little village surrounded by never ending wine fields making Lorenzo stop the car several times so I could take photos out the car window.
The riverboat is anchored there permanently and functions as a B&B, restored amazingly well and run by a couple from Belgium. We had our own entrance on the boat with an hublot overlooking the canal and the goose keeping us awake with his quacking all night long.
We left our luggage and went for a walk along the canal in the wonderful evening light.
The dinner, included in our gift, was served in a local resturant where I've had the best red wine so far here in France. As a starter I was served the real fois gras and had quite an unpleasant experience. Fois Gras is just not for me! The following Maigret de Canard was honey coated and absolutely deliscious - the dessert too which was some speciality from paris and which the waitress was surprised I didn't know yet. Of course the name of that dessert went in one ear and out the out the other after a bottle of the lovely local wine.
Snuggles, a goose quacking and a few hours sleep later we woke up to a sunny day and was served a big french breakfast with tartines and croissants in the captain's wheel house.
First on the program was to buy some more of that wine we had the evening before then off to see Béziers but stopping first to see the
Oppidum Romanum which offered this view of the fields made by the romans which got this particular shape because of the irrigation system they made.
We originally wanted to rent bicycles to go along the canal but the rental place was closed on weekends (!!) when most people go for daytrips. That's logical! So we headed off to Béziers which was a big mistake - (we should probably have chosen Narbonne instead) it was quite run-down and intimidating. We might have parked on the wrong side of town but even the city centre didn't seem that appealing. So we went to see the 7 connected locks of the canal just close by and ended up having lovely picnic there before heading home in the afternoon.
I guess sometimes you just need to dig out some extra courage from your inner self and head out into the city jungle and ask for a job in person. So today I printed my skills on paper and went to talk to a company giving private lessons to school kids and they actually found my profile interesting and asked me to come back for an interview on tuesday!
