Written By: Paul
Sète is the kind of place that is made for day trips. It’s an easy eighteen minute train ride from Montpellier, making it extremely accessible, and it’s a festive, impossibly picturesque place ripe for exploring on foot. We had wanted to visit this gorgeous Mediterranean port city from the day we arrived three months ago, so we were excited to jump out of bed, zip down to Saint Roch station early on a Saturday morning, and make the short trip from Montpellier to the small city many refer to as the “Venice of Languedoc.”
Our train arrived in Sète just after nine o’clock. It was relatively quiet as we made our way through the station to the street. As soon as we crossed the road we were met with a bridge and a waterway that proved to be a preview of what was to come – boats, marinas, hotels on the shore, hills in the background – the kind of place that reminds you just how fortunate you are to be in Southern France.
We couldn’t wait to explore but we had to take care of something first – we needed a pain au chocolat. I suppose no one needs a pain au chocolat, but we had started a tradition since moving to France that on travel days we would skip breakfast and then grab a pain au chocolat in whatever town we were visiting. For the uninitiated, the pain au chocolat is a viennoiserie-style pastry, very croissant-like: light, flaky, layered – but where the pain au chocolat differs is with the chocolate inserted into the middle of the pastry. When you buy them from French bakeries, especially in the morning, they’re usually incredibly fresh, sometimes still warm, and they melt in your mouth. The great thing about France is that if you’re looking for a bakery you never have to look very far – we found one about two blocks from the train station, and they had just baked a batch of gorgeous pain au chocolat, so we were in luck. We quickly inhaled our breakfast of champions and tackled the city, fuelled by one of nature’s perfect foods.
We made our way towards Sète’s centre, walking along the water. Boats line the waterways everywhere in this city, basically turning the entire city into one large marina. It was still early so the waterways were quiet, making for a peaceful walk. I’ve always enjoyed getting to places early so we can explore before having to fight the crowds, especially on the weekends.
It was a brilliant morning, the sun casting an orange glow across the water. Sète is magical on a nice, sunny day.
Sète is bigger than we thought it would be. It’s really made up of two halves – the lower city, with its canals and busy port, and the upper city, a community built on the side and top of Mount Saint Clair. We wouldn’t have time for the upper city on this visit, but the views from Sète down below are definitely enhanced by having Mount Saint Clair in the background.
Before visiting we had wondered about the “Venice of Languedoc” moniker – it seems that any town with a few canals brands themselves the “Venice of Whatever”, but in Sète’s case it really does apply. There are more canals than we had originally anticipated, and it does have a very special vibe as you wander through the city.
A few days before our visit we learned about a street in town dedicated to street art. We’re big fans of street art, so we made our way over to Rue de Tunis. Rue de Tunis is a funky little corner of the city, a nice bonus in a city full of bonuses. It’s a street that uses the art as its draw but also features brocantes, vinyl shops, and special events.
The artwork is really well done, a mix of styles, colours, and vibes to take in.
This is a street that really does deserve its own post, but in the meantime here’s one more…
….and one last one for good measure. It’s a fun street, a nice addition to strolling the canals.
Having had our street art fix we made our way into the more touristy city centre, where shops and seafood restaurants run as far as the eye can see. We’re not seafood people, which is problematic in a town where every restaurant you come across offers the same specials.
Mussels, squid, octupus, oysters – if these things aren’t up your alley you’re in for a bit of a hunt when searching for food. I know all of the seafood lovers out there are cringing right now as I say that we were just looking for a sandwich in a seafood haven like Sète, but that’s the way it is. While there we walked by a shop with busy workers preparing a local Sète delicacy known as tielle. To us they looked like little cakes and we thought we might try one until we learned its main ingredient was octupus. Octupus pie. I am sure to many of you out there this sounds delicious, but to us we would rather be forced to shoot dijon mustard up our nostrils than have to imbibe octupus pie.
So it follows, then, that we didn’t have a single bite of anything caught in the nearby Étang de Thau, where much of Sète’s fresh seafood is caught, and yet we still loved visiting – so that tells you how awesome a city it must be if we skipped one of Sète’s most famous traditions. If you love seafood then I would reckon Sète is the place to be for you.
But I digress. Our dislike of seafood sent us to a very nice little bakery where we had an amazing formule that included a sandwich baked on fresh bread, dessert (eclair chocolat for me and millefeuille for Angela) and a drink for €7 each! True, it was no octupus pie, but wow what a deal. We sat on the edge of the canal and watched the boats as we ate. Perfect.
Fed and still flush with cash thanks to our very affordable (yet delicious) lunch, we walked out to the edge of the port, where Sète meets the Mediterranean. We could hear the waves crashing into the shoreline before we could see them, and we hadn’t seen seaspray like that since our last trip to Nova Scotia. Angela grew up on the Atlantic coast in Dartmouth; my hometown is Victoria, British Columbia on the Pacific, and we’ve both lived around big bodies of water our entire lives, so we like being near the Med these days. In Sète, the sea is framed by some pretty spectacular buildings and rock formations.
The building in the photo above is a spectacular outdoor stone amphitheatre that overlooks the Mediterranean. There were no events happening when we were there, but we will certainly look forward to coming back and checking it out when there are live performances. Originally built as a defensive fort more than three hundred years ago, it was converted to a theatre in 1959 and is now known as Le Théâtre de la Mer.
Around the other side of the amphitheatre and a couple of kilometres up the coast there are more than 12kms of gorgeous beaches that visitors flock to in warmer weather. We didn’t get there on this trip, but the beaches of Sète are on our list for this summer.
We walked along the breakwater for a bit, taking in the Lighthouse Mole Saint Louis before turning back towards the city’s centre.
Coming back towards the main drag we enjoyed wandering in and out of some of the shops and voyaging up some of the little side streets. Sète was hopping at this point in the day (early afternoon), and it was fun to feel the energy as people buzzed about. The roads up to the top of Mount Saint Clair were enticing to climb, but we would have to save that for another time.
We crossed the bridges another time or two, enjoying the freedom to just wander.
As we made our way back out of town we came across a shop that houses a small artists’ gallery and store for working artists. Called Atelier DPJ, it was a print by artist Éric Lacan that caught Angela’s eye as we were walking by. She wanted to go in and get a closer look so we went in to this funky little art shop and really enjoyed checking it out.
While there I was grabbed by many of the prints produced by the Bad Georges team. Very cool stuff. The shop is located at 16 Quai Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, or check out www.atelierdpj.com. We will definitely be back to see what they have in store.
We walked for another half hour so, checking out the shops and the little boats moored along the sides of the canal. We really couldn’t have picked a better day for this kind of thing.
Clock ticking down to our train departure, Angela wanted to man the camera and take a few pictures of me as I very rarely have my picture taken, being the guy who is always behind the lens. She’s getting pretty good and I’m worried about losing my job at this point.
Our day done, we shuffled over to the train station and got ready to board our train back to Montpellier. We covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time, but we also missed our fair share of Sète highlights – the upper city, a show at the amphitheatre, the beaches, the Musée International des Arts Modestes (a funky modest art museum we had heard about). No worries, it gives us a fantastic excuse to return to a gorgeous place that easily exceeded our expectations, octupus pies or not.
Have you been to Sète? What were your thoughts? If not, would you like to visit one day? Please feel free to share your comments below – thanks!