Driving the South of France

Our Europe adventure continues!

After hopping on a bus in Barcelona, Spain, we arrived in Perpignan France 2.5 hours later. We followed the little conspicuous signs (that we later decided was a French-thing) and found our Europcar rental.
An insider tip: our German friends we were traveling with would of had to pay double for the same booking. We're not sure why (and we didn't want to ask!) but booking from the US saved us 150 euros.

From there we decided to "wing it". We had a few checkpoints in mind, such as Montpellier, Marseille, and Nice (where we were scheduled to drop the car to), but other than that, we spent each night setting a game plan for the next day!

Day 1
From Perpignan, we drove to the coast and followed it until we saw something of interest.
Not too much longer, we stumbled across Beziers. We found parking, took our own tour of the city on the hill, and bought picnic supplies.

Banquette, cheese, meat, and wine. After a fisherman helped us open our bottle of wine, we shared our splendors and became friends with no common language. We watched him fish and soaked in the afternoon sun.

By nightfall, we realized no wifi meant no place to sleep...
We fled to our "oasis", as we joked, of McDonald's for a coffee and free wifi.
The accommodation we found, Le Gambetta in Vias, France, was wonderful. The B&B owner greeted us warmly after the reception hours had closed. Our only complaint was the 100 Euro/night cost on our traveler's budget. However, that may have been our own fault for waiting two hours before we needed a room to book one.

Day 2
After a lovely croissant breakfast on the terrace, we departed for Sete, France. A bustling fisherman's village flowed with tourists. We did a little (chocolate) shopping and enjoyed the scenery for an hour or so before departing again.

A short while later, we arrived in Montpellier, France. The afternoon hours were spent walking the city. We found some pasta and made a picnic on a set of stairs and settled in to people-watch.
Back in the car, we kept our journey moving. After an unsuccessful time in finding a beach, we decided to head to Arles, France for the final stop for the evening.

Arles was a beautiful small town I wish we would have had more time in. It seemed shops all closed (even though it was maybe 5:30/6pm) so we settled for finding dinner and drinks instead.
A delicious Le Burger, a drink at a 3-story Irish Pub (which, sadly, I'm blanking on the name), and we found our way back to our hotel.

Day 3
And we're off to Marseille!
Traffic: Terrible.
Parking: Terrible.
City: Beautiful.
We spent all day and evening in Marseille, which I believe was a good choice. By just walking around, we visited a few monuments and churches. Marseille also has a pretty beach, although a little chilly on the day we were there. The beach is certainly not able to walk to...Thankfully we had our rental car.
At night, we decided to walk and see where the roads led us. We ended up in another Irish place (go figure), but this time, with karaoke!