Sète - and a seafront rental home with commanding views

Sète buzzes all year round, but in summer, it rocks

Often the best tourist places are not tourist places at all, but where visitors are an add-on to real life. Sète is one of those.


Photo: Sète is France's second biggest fishing port


It’s France’s second fishing town after Boulogne and a romantic mediterranean port where ferries leave for north Africa. Sète buzzes all year round, but in summer, it rocks.

This town runs on fish. Every weekday, trawlers and seine netters leave harbour around three o’clock in the morning for fishing grounds about 40 kilometres out to sea.

The boats return about four in afternoon. That’s when the fish market or criée takes over. It’s called the criée because buyers and sellers used to shout the offers and bids. These days it’s more genteel; computers do the shouting.

Then comes the eating. Sète abounds in restaurants. Seafood restaurants, that is. The quays are littered with them. Just hours out of the sea, juicy fresh sea-bream finds its way to your table and tastes like nothing that you’ve bought in a supermarket.

Then there are the joutes or jousts if you prefer. These are a remake of Gladiator, this time on water. Red and blue rowing boats complete with eight oarsmen, on-board musicians and a lancer up front on the prow, vie for position in the main canal.

These festivals for grown up kids falling in the water take place at the beginning of July and and the third week in August.

Now there's a new attraction - a holiday rental home out of this world.Maison Mont St Clair has a commanding position on the exclusive 'Corniche' of Sète with magnificent, Mediterranean sea-views.

It's an easy, less than 5 minute stroll down to the sea-front with a great choice of restaurants, café bars, bakery, supermarket and other shops.

Related links :

• http://www.purefrance.com/34447/holiday-rental-villa.php