Reconfinement; or Confinement, Act II

Oh my but it’s been a long time since the last blog! So, what have we been doing? NOTHING! And that’s the problem…

We've seen this before, but we never get tired of this view of classic Montpellier, with the steeple of St. Anne's pointing to the sky...

We’ve been back in lockdown for the last month or so (oh, no, it’s been three four five weeks; it only SEEMS like a month year!). And along with that comes a sense of lassitude, of hey, I can do this today, or tomorrow. Or, maybe next week, since we’re gonna be right here.

 

Montpellier's Arc de Triomphe (1693), predating the one in Paris by a century or two; that's the water temple 'way back there, and Louis XIV in between (the statue, not the guy standing on the steps).

But things are not totally stagnant. For example, I’ve passed the code part of my driver’s license exam!* It’s the first step in getting a license. The next one is to head over to a driving school and sign up for some in-the-car lessons; they’ll tell me when I’m ready for the final exam. (But wait, you say; What about your California license? To which I respond, It’s only good for one year! I guess the point is, if I’m going to be here for more than that, I’m not just a visitor. Get licensed here!)

Another of long-armed Mark's selfies, as we celebrate my passage of the Code de la Route test.

 

* So why a French driving license? Because driving is very different here! It starts with cramming cars into cities that were originally built for people and horses. Then add a few decades of cars being allowed, then banned, then new roads built. There are just a lot more situations and variables, rules and exceptions, and signs explaining them, all of which have to be understood and acted on. Overall, European drivers are required to know a whole lot more than those in California.

Our shrine to the driver's license: Vroom vroom, soon soon!

 

Of course, driving school will have to wait until we are free to roam around again.

 

View from the Water Temple, looking towards the Arc with Louis XIV pointing towards St. Anne's.

The Water Temple on a chilly Fall day.

It's not all old; new street art appears all the time!

In other news, Paula and I now both have our residence cards! Sometime in the past we mentioned we’d gotten our récépissé, a receipt for documents delivered; now we’ve gotten the actual credit-card sized, official ID. It makes us legal here until next October. Just one more step for the French paperwork trifecta: Carte de Sejour (residency permit), Carte Vitale (medical card), and Permis de conduire (driving license). Looks like I’ll need a bigger wallet! 

 
November 1, All Souls Day: the tradition in France is to visit the graves of those who have passed on. We don't really know anyone buried here, but we do walk by a cemetery in our comings and goings (Le Cimetière Protestant). So we stopped in there, finally...

We normally walk by outside the high wall, but today, All Souls' Day, we stopped in for a visit.

For some reason, I find these old stones and wrought iron comforting....

The French government has loosened up the confinement rules, just in time for Christmas (not coincidentally!). Non-essential businesses (hair salons, clothing stores, homewares, gift shops) are now allowed to operate, with regulations as to number of customers inside. The time and distance allowed for exercise has been opened up, from one hour and one kilometer to three hours and 20 km. We still need to fill out the attestation, a paper showing our name, address, and reason for being out. There’s a smart phone app, so no real paper is involved, but still, one more thing to forget before leaving the house. Well, at least I feel we're pretty safe here in France.

The Beating Heart, a Christmas decoration in the Comedie, the main square of Montpellier

 

The confinement is having an effect; the numbers have come down significantly in the last few weeks, and if they keep dropping we’ll have restaurants and cafes open by mid-January. Still, we’re all so tired of the lockdowns! And now we have news of the vaccines; couple that with the loosening of restrictions and many are taking it like it’s all pretty much over.

Fall colors in the Jardin des Plantes, established in 1593 as a botanic garden for the medical school. 

 

Mary, Kate and Mark check info on the secrets tree (passers-by hide slips of paper with their secrets in the many natural crevasses) in the Jardin des Plantes.

Mary, Paula, and Kate with ruins at the Jardin.

We keep kicking around the idea of returning to Seville for the end of the year, as we have for the last few years. But the pandemic is still raging there, too. The restaurants and cafes, the museums, the historical sites we like so much… all closed. And what hoops must we jump through just to enter the country? Pass the (Covid) test? Stay in our room for a week? We’ll probably just end up enjoying the winter sunshine—the very chilly winter sunshine—here in the South of France.

On a recent outing we hiked around these wetlands not far off the tram route.

With the new 20km confinement limit, we're finding new places to go. We stop for lunch during our wetlands outing. (Let's see, Mary is missing so this must be her photo!)

 

Pink Flamingos must like this region; we find them everywhere!

 

Sculpture of a mythical creature said to inhabit the salty marshes here; stories of its cruelty were used to terrorize the children.

A walkway crossing one of the smaller êtangs (ponds).

And, there were horses! Not the wild white ponies of the Camargue (a region not far from here); these are fenced in but not looking too unhappy!

 

 

A big draw for us to this city is its history. A 20-minute walk from our place takes us to the old city: the écusson, or shield, as it’s called, due to its shape on the map. (Here’s a map from a previous post.) This part of Montpellier looks essentially the same as it did in the 16^th century (the city was established a few hundred years earlier, but things do change!). We’ve published many photos of the old city. But Montpellier is one of the fastest growing cities in France; new buildings are inevitable. A 20-minute walk in the other direction takes us to buildings that were just getting started when we were first here four years ago. This area is not, as our friend Debra says, the reason we came to France. But still, the ultra-modern high-rises have their own charms…

  

Some of Montpellier's more modern buildings, seen from across the river.

This building, with its dichroitic glass balcony windows, is particularly interesting.

Sunlight reflected from the balconies across the river. 

And in the river itself!

These new high-rises are not why we came to France, but they are unique to Montpellier!

 

As we write this Christmas is still a few weeks away. We hope you are all well, and stay safe! 2021 is a new year, and just around the corner!