We arrived in Montpellier on July 18 and said good-by to Hugh and Maureen, who were off to a wedding outside of the city. We trudged uphill from the station to our airbnb apartment situated on a narrow medieval street. This old southern city is a 45 minute ride by tram from the Mediterranean Sea. Montpellier’s university, founded in 1160, is one of the world’s oldest. Even today, about a third of the population is students. Because the city is sunny for all but about 30 days annually, many grownups elect to live there too.

The proprietor was away, and the person in charge didn’t know much about the apartment. Being French, however, he did have a long list of ideas of where we could have a nice meal, and lunch was our first order of business. We had tapas at Comptoir de l’Arc, on quiet plaza up the street. One of our best meals of the trip was on the following day at Le Petit Jardin where we lunched on sole, artfully presented with small mounds of mashed sweet potatoes and a layered potato “cake”, and John Dory fish surrounded by spelt risotto with a red wine and squid ink sauce. We dined in the cool shaded garden, a refuge from the heat of the day.

Radio France holds a music festival in Montpellier each summer, and we took in two concerts. The first, on Saturday, was performed at the Corum, conference center and home of the Opera Berlioz, at the end of the city’s Jardin du Champ de Mars. It was a full house for the Quatuor Tchalik, highly regarded musical siblings who performed a composition by Jacques Boisgallais and Schubert’s Quartet for Strings in D Major. The music was excellent, the seats were comfortable, the place was air conditioned, and the concert was free. Merci, Radio France.

On Sunday, we took the tram to the Domaine d’O for an open-air concert performed by the Trio Zeliha—the Trio No. 1 in D Minor by Anton Arenski and the Trio No. 1 in D Minor by Felix Mendelssohn. The audience was entertained by the music and by the drama of musicians trying to control sheet music in the breeze. It was a pleasant way to spend a warm Sunday afternoon.

This year’s music festival theme was Soleil de Nuit, and featured a variety of music and events united by the performers’ origins in Eastern Europe and Russia. Over 150 of the programs are free and, if what we heard is indicative, programs are top quality.

In 2013, the mayor of Montpellier, Hélène Mandroux, performed France’s first gay marriage and so the city has a special place in the hearts of the gay and lesbian French community. On Saturday we found ourselves in the middle of a gay pride parade in the city center. It was the second political event of the day, which began with the weekly protest march of the Gilets Jaunes, who have been demonstrating against the policies of President Macron since March.

Because of the heat, we saw less of Montpellier than we might have in cooler weather—thus one blog post for our 4-night stay. Below are some random scenes from our visit and audioguide walking tour.