Our Official Welcome!

Like many towns in France, Sète has an official welcome event for its new residents. While larger towns have these more often, in Sète, it's just the one weekend per year.

Yesterday, we met at the tourist office for a nice bus tour around town - there were nearly 100 of us, and that was just the half touring the first day! Today, the second half get their tour. This is a bit mind boggling to me, to think that a town of not quite 45 thousand welcomed 200 new residents just in one year!

So, our tour... we signed in at 1:30, and at 2:00, two large buses pulled up, and we boarded.

Sète canal

A very short ride later, we stopped at the phare. It's apparently a popular place for pictures - we got our group photo at the #Sète sign, and a couple were having their wedding shots taken. Behind the lighthouse, you can see two giant cruise ships.

Phare with 2 cruise ships

Our next stop was at the Théâtre de la Mer, where we had seen several concerts this Summer. This is the view from the stage area, where we couldn't go before.

Théâtre de la Mer

From there, we went past the Corniche, down along the beaches, and back to a giant indoor swimming pool and gym complex. Even though this is very near us, and the bus goes right past it, we hadn't noticed that is was a complex open to the public (or even what it was!).

Fonquerne Swimming Pool

Next, we crossed back towards centre-ville, but up the mountain a bit, to the Paul Valéry Museum. While we'd been inside before, we hadn't seen the garden.

Paul Valéry garden

Then, we went up, up, up! To the cross and lookout point of Mont Saint-Clair

Mont Saint-Clair

We then crossed back down towards the beaches, but turned instead to the Espace Brassens. After this pictureless stop, we went on to the Théâtre Molière. I was quite happy to see this, as we had signed up for a tour earlier in the year, but it had been cancelled. I love this architecture...

Théâtre Molière

 Inside too

In the main hall

Look at all this legroom! We have a few concerts here coming up, and now I'm certain that we'll be comfortable :-)

View from the stage

Our next stop seemed very far away - we entered the port area, which is extremely important for the town's economy. Technically, this wasn't a stop, as it was a restricted area, but we drove around a lot of sections that most people don't get to see. Here are just a few of the many "giraffes" necessary to a large port.

Giraffes

Here's the other side of one of those cruise ships we saw earlier, with bus #2 in front.

Cruise ship in port

Our last stop was at 6:00 (so a looong tour!), at the Hôtel de Ville (mayor's office). We had a very pleasant apéro, including a speech (but no mayor for us today) and plenty of conversations with elected officials and other new Sétois. We all also got a packet of information and coupons to many of the places we visited :-)

Mayor's Office reception

Tomorrow, we'll all get together again for a dinner at the Théâtre de la Mer!

~~~
Something interesting happened in my quest to sign up for this; there's a lesson or two in it. When we first arrived, we went to the mayor's office to introduce ourselves, and they said to email our info to them to find out about events and law changes (we did). Then, when we heard about this welcome event, we sent another email (to the address indicated) to sign up. Well, a month and a half later, we hadn't heard back. I went in, and asked what happened? Well, they didn't have an answer, just that something obviously went wrong. When they asked for our info again, I thought it odd, but wrote it for them. Then they said it was probably too late (this was in fact, the day before, so...). I was pretty much resigned to missing out, but pushed back just a little (and really, this was just the tiniest push). I said "but, we signed up the first of September..." Well, they said they would look into it, and someone would call. Amazingly, they did! And, they registered us for both the tour and the dinner!