Montpellier Airport

I have to admit it; Montpellier doesn't act like it wants visitors! I spent hours (I don't know how many!) trying to work out a good way to get to and from Sète and the Montpellier airport 🙄.

Plan A... I started with what I knew:

• There are lots of trains from Sète to Montpellier center (and a city bus can get us there)
• There's a shuttle from Place de l'Europe in Montpellier to the airport 
• There's a tram system to get you from the train station to the shuttle 

It sounds doable, and I once traveled the route with a friend. But when I started to plot it all out, things got worse and worse! First, there are the usual issues with making all those connections: bus-train-tram-shuttle-airport. You have to plan on taking an earlier bus (etc) than you expect, just so you don't miss the next leg. And remember, approximately half of the trains in France run late! OK, still doable. But! The big stumbling block is that Montpellier is reworking the tram lines, and that means a big detour (and a lot of extra uncertainty). I was able to work out the route and timetable going, but coming back... was simply impossible!

Plan B... It's not advertised, and not obvious, but there are a  few TGV* trains that go between Sète and the new train station outside of Montpellier (called Montpellier Sud, as opposed to the station in town called Montpellier St Roch).** And, the airport shuttle makes a stop there! This is sounding promising - we have a shorter trip, and skip the town and its tram mess! Well, that would have been great, if only the schedules had lined up, and if only the shuttle had had more runs... I found trains, but going to the airport meant leaving 7 hours before our flight (it's a 3-hour flight, by the way), and coming home had no leeway at all for a flight delay!

Plan C... The airport website has a taxi calculator - I entered our data, and it told me that we would spend about $200 (our flight totals $400, by the way). I also found out that we would have to pre-arrange the taxi coming home, since it will be quite late!

Plan D... I scrolled around the airport website and saw parking options! Really, why wasn't this Plan A!?!? I do know why; it's because we simply aren't used to thinking about driving much anymore! Our car, purchased in mid-2019, finally has over 4000 kilometers on it! Well, lickety-split, we bought a long-term parking spot! It's about a 10 minute walk to the departure hall (P6, no shuttle, small airport). The rate table online is apparently old - we paid a bit more than it promised, but it was still reasonable at $60. Add in a drive of less than an hour, and it's looking good!

I did top off the gas tank though...

~~~

*TGV - High speed trains

** The high-speed train network is being expanded, and part of that means stations are being built way outside of towns. Some towns (Nîmes, for example) have connected the two systems nicely - a TER (regional train) track gets you from the city-center station to the TGV station. But Montpellier couldn't seem to do that 😳.