From Montpelier to Sete and home again

Well, we made it to Montpelier for our birthdays, and though the weather was ok (we are weather obsessed here...actually, to be accurate Jed is weather obsessed; he watches the French weather five times a day and is always analyzing and explaining the weather maps to us)however, after losing Jed in the afternoon, and spending the rest of our time trying to plan for the spring break that we are now in, we didn't do much celebrating on Saturday. To make matters worse, I was beginning to get sick, which I am just now getting over, and felt crappy. We ate pizza at one of Christina's favorite places, and then went to bed listening to CNN world news and Jon Stewart (in English!). The next day was the time change, which we didn't know, so we just barely made our train to Sete (is there a pattern here?)

We had earlier to decided to spend Sunday in Sete, a short train ride from Montpelier to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and though it was very windy, and I hate windy, it was otherwise lovely. Boats line the river of the city and the harbors on the sea, and the water was a beautifully bright aqua that commanded our attention for sometime. We ate pizza in the park and then walked up to the cemetary where the French poet Paul Valery is buried. I don't want to be buried, but if I ever changed my mind about that it would be to be buried in a place like this. Not only is the view from the hill the cemetary sits on beautiful, the place itself is beautiful. If my computer weren't on the fritz, I could put up some pictures, but alas, techonology doesn't seem to like France. Anyhow, from the hill you can see the aqua water extend as a calm sheet all the way to the horizon, where it joins the darker blue of the smooth, cloudless sky. The place itself is huge, and terraced into the hill, though it feels small and one feels more at home among these crosses and monuments for the dead than you would think possible. It deserves the label breathtaking, and though we didn't find Paul Valery's grave, we were happy to have made the trek up the hill to see it. It remains my favorite place visited so far.