"It's time for the good times, Forget about the bad times, We need a holiday"... Well, my parents needed a holiday, so they came to visit moi!

I've been a little absent from the blogging world recently so I feel its time to catch-up... The main reason for at least a week of my absence was that my parents came to visit. Yep, that's right, dearest Mummy and Daddy Hunt drove all the way from Germany to Montpellier just to see me! They had been working in Germany, and in the usual Hunt manner, decided that a mere twelve hour drive covering several hundred miles was the only thing separating them from Montpellier.  So, laden with a box of Weston's finest organic cider, several boxes of cereal, countless cartons of soya milk, vegetable stock cubes, Whittard's hot chocolate, Marks & Spencer's Earl Grey, Twinings Everyday and half the contents of our local Boots store, they made their way to the South of France...


They left Germany on a Saturday afternoon, and with the help of Frank Turner (those would be the Frank Turner CDs that I had purchased from amazon.co.uk and asked them to bring down for me), made it all the way to Dijon.  A swift one night stop-over at "Camp-a-nilly Did-jun", and they arrived in Montpellier by Sunday evening.  For those not familiar with an English Garmin sat-nav, "Camp-a-nilly Did-jun" is sat-nav speak for the Campanile hotel, Dijon.  It would appear that the sat-nav is completely incapable of speaking French.  Or German for that matter.  Nonetheless, sat-nav woman does provide some amusement when your lost in Montpellier's roadworks at eleven 'o' clock at night, and she's there spewing utter, incomprehensible gobbledeygook at you, that in no way, shape, or form resembles the road names that she is attempting to pronounce



I still had to go to 'work' on the mornings that my parents were here, but as I finished at twelve, it merely meant that my parents had a leisurely lie-in and met me at twelve for some lunch.  Lunch would then be followed by the afternoon's events.  The first afternoon, I planned a 'Keta Mystery Tour of Montpellier', aka a walk around all of the interesting bits that I had found in Montpellier so far.  This ranged from the pretty side-streets of the old town, to the Arc de Triumph and its park, all seasoned with my Dad's complaints that the beautiful sunshine and thirty degree heat was "too hot", and that he was on holiday and therefore wanted a beer at four in the afternoon.  Oh how I had missed family holidays!  To my Mum's delight (and my Dad's dismay) this was largely also a tour of the best shops I had found since moving to Montpellier.  For anybody who's interested, the Hippy Market on Rue de Petit Saint-Jean is quite the treasure trove of 60s/70s/80s vintage goodies.



Another afternoon was spent visiting Ikea.  It wasn't the whole afternoon - I just needed some more hangers (new wardrobe, lots of clothes, no hangers), and saw this as the perfect opportunity to show my parents the delights of the large modern shopping centre at Odysseum.  Cue my Dad grumbling that he'd come all the way to Montpellier only to end up in an Ikea... I think his exact words were, "I might as well be in bloody Bristol".  Incidentally, he said that just as an elderly English lady bustled past complaining that she had no space to drain her pots in the kitchen, which did some-what confuse us all.  After the thrilling trip to Ikea, we went in seek of something a little more picturesque and wandered from Place de l'Europe, past the fountains, to Antigone.  I didn't just magically develop my penchant for photography; it has most definitely been inherited from my Mum, hence the whole week of their visit was really just one big opportunity for the both of us to wander around glued to our cameras.  I have hundreds of photos from that week, some of which really will make it to Facebook at some point.  Having said that, I'm sure my Mum has hundreds more.  It wasn't a visit, more a week-long photography competition!

My parents didn't leave until the following Saturday, so the other three afternoons were filled by two trips to Aigues-Mortes (all will be revealed on that in another post - it really does deserve a whole explanation of its own), and, in true British fashion, the other was filled with a trip to the seaside for an ice cream!  The evenings were spent enjoying the hospitality of the Francis and Marco household, but again, I feel as though this is something else that deserves a whole post of its own.


That week really did fly by and before I knew it, it was Thursday night and my boyfriend was arriving at Montpellier train station ready for a weekend of Montpellier-seeing and French Patisserie-tasting.  Having not seen him for over three weeks, he was a welcome addition to the Dorset reunion that had struck-up in the South of France.  I think the thing that I enjoyed most about the time with my parents though, was that it was a chance to actually wander aimlessly with people.  I'd done a lot of wandering aimlessly by myself, and it was nice to finally be able to share it with a set of fresh eyes.  That, and of course the copious quantities of cheap soya milk that they brought over, as well as the €30 dress that my Dad bought me in an attempt to get me and my Mum out of the shop quicker! All round, I'd call it a week well spent.