A 15 Minute Train Ride to the Mediterranean: Sete, France

For one of my classes, Civilizations du Sud, we have to do a presentation on a southern French city. When the day came to pick cities my group didn't exactly know what we wanted to do. Every city we mentioned had already been picked so we were really having a tough time--we thought all the good ones had been taken. Our professor told us to do Sete, and I really didn't know much about this place. I knew it was in the south obviously, but it wasn't on my list of top cities to visit in southern France. Regardless, I now had to go, but I never thought how beautiful Sete would be...

Since I, nor any of my group members, have class on Friday, we decided this would be a great way to start the weekend. Why not just take a trip down to the Mediterranean and be tourists? Cool. Plus the weather was absolutely gorgeous. Train tickets cost 7 euro roundtrip for 30 minutes out of our day total...awesome.

This was the first image I saw when we arrived in Sete: this canal. Literally, walked out of the train station and boom. The water was so so blue, I was a bit shocked. I mean, I've seen the Mediterranean before when I went to Nice, but I guess I just couldn't believe I was right there, and it was such a short ride. Like, when do you get to say, "Oh hey, I'm just gonna go chill at the Mediterranean today..." NEVER.

We decided it would be a smart idea to find the tourism office and get a map of the city. Obviously that would help us out a lot since we did need to do a presentation on this place. We finally found the office, after following a lot of misleading signs and mapped out what we wanted to see around the city. We felt that the city was small enough that we could probably see everything we wanted to. We later found out that though the city is small, it is built entirely on a hill. Let's just say at the end of the day, my feet, and legs, were killing me.

One of the views we came across while meandering around the city. We, of course, were on one of the hills at this point.

Fisherman's Cemetery: French cemeteries are a lot different than those in the states. They all have a lot of decoration and many of the graves are for entire families. Also, they are very close to one another. We found the grave of Paul Valery, the man our "beautiful" university is named after. Notice the sarcasm on the word beautiful

For lunch, we wanted to get some specialities setoises. Sete is very well known for it's specific seafood dishes that can only be found there. We all love seafood, so we knew we had to go for it. We found a restaurant with a formule of 13 euros: formule means you pick which appetizer, entree, and desert/coffee you want from a certain menu.

What we got for 13 euros was totally worth it.

Top: Escargot de la mer--I love escargot and these were delicious. I was surprised to see that they didn't look like escargot I was used to...these looked more like mini-conch shells rather than snail shells. Interesting.

Bottom: Moules farcies a la Setoise--Mussels (huge as you can see) stuffed with meat, and then cooked in the pasta gravy. This was one of the best dishes I have had in France. So so so good.

Another canal. The colors of the buildings contrast beautifully with the color of the sky and water.

Sete is not only famous for their cuisine but also jousting. And no, I'm not talking about jousting on horses, I'm talking about jousting on boats. There are teams: one member of each team will go to the tip of the boat (on the plank of the bowsprit overhanging the boat) and try to knock off the competitor from his boat. The rest of the team are the oarsmen and control the boat in the water. This happens in the summer, and I really wish I could see it. It sounds so fun to watch. Supposedly it's a huge event. The statue in this picture gives a glimpse on this sport of canal jousting.

In Sete, there is this huge mountain, Mt. Saint Claire, you can climb to see panoramic views of the entire city. Yes, of course we wanted to do this, but oh boy was it a workout. Here's a picture of only probably a third of the stairs we had to climb. They were so tiny, and each step was a different height. Really good for the legs!

Finally reached the top of the mountain and this is what we saw. Literally got to the top and said, "oh my god" because it was just breathtaking.

This was the inside of this really small Church that was on top of the mountain. The inside had so many different paintings--the walls were covered. It totally was not was I was expecting, but it was really interesting. It was more-so modern looking art, rather than classical.

We hiked back down the mountain and finished off our wonderful day at Sete

Another picture of a canal in Sete. I love these little boats they are...basically adorable.

This point here is known as a typical Setoise quartier, or neighborhood. This section of Sete was insanely pretty. I love the bright pastel colors against the blues.

Bright colors of the houses--love it. I could totally picture my mom loving it here--right by the water in the sun.

Sete was the perfect day trip and I would totally recommend visiting. There isn't a ton to see but the scenery is so beautiful it's hard to pass up. Definitely a worthwhile trip!