Montpellier, France: Wine, Sun, and Architecture

Last weekend we took a beautiful trip to the southwestern coast of France - we landed in Montpellier and traveled to a number of cities around it.  I went into the trip with low expectations.  I had loved Nice so much that any trip would be hard to beat it.  This trip was amazing, but in totally different ways.  We didn't get the beautiful blue views of Nice, but we did get a tremendous amount of history, architecture, and wine.  On our first two days, we took a full-day wine tour with Montpellier Wine Tours and the second day visited Nimes, a key regional outpost of the Romans.  Both were fabulous!

During our tour, we visited three different wineries.  The region was originally used for quantity wine (especially during WW II when French soldiers received a liter of wine per person, per day!).  More recently, they have focused on making quality wines and we definitely got to taste the difference.  Here is the spread from the first winery:

We got to visit the vines around the town - the grapes were beautiful on this bright, blue sky day!

The second vineyard we visited had been in the family for 32 generations!  Can you imagine that!  The woman who inherited the vineyard was about my age and very passionate for the process.  Talk about born into a profession!   After our visit to the second winery, we stopped in a beautiful medieval village for lunch:

It had beautiful nooks and streets:

The second day, we took the train a short trip to the town of Nimes.  This was a key Roman city and many ruins still remain.  We also lucked out that a friend of P's from elementary school lived there.  Maggie was an excellent guide who showed us around the town and took us out to the amazing aqueduct! 

Our first stop was a Roman amphitheater that is much better preserved than the Colosseum.  Because it's not Rome, it was wonderfully empty to take some really clear shots:  

Amazingly, the amphitheater is still used as a venue for concerts and events, so the bleacher seating is relatively modern.  Incredible that it can be used 2,000 years later.  Maggie told us that modern bands like the Arctic Monkeys and Bjork have played recently!

The Ponte du Gard is the crazy three tier aqueduct.  We felt so lucky to be able to see the amazing Roman architecture:

Also, this random picture of my hubby in the village is one of my most favorite of him: