Mediterranean Cruise 2022 — Arriving Sète and heading to Aigues-Mortes

We completed our transatlanitic cruise aboard Royal Caribbean’s Vision of the Seas, docking in Barcelona on 13 May 2022. After a hike to our favorite Barcelona restaurant, we hoofed it back to Vision of the Seas to begin an eight-day Mediterranean cruise that would take us to some French and Spanish destinations not usually associated with a Mediterranean cruise. And so it was that the next day, 14 May, we arrived at the French port of Sète. We would not be there for long, however, as Ursula had us scheduled for a tour of a different destination — the medieval walled city of Aigues-Mortes.

We approached Aigues-Mortes from the north, where we alighted from our tour bus near the Tour de Constance built between 1242 and 1254:

Tour de Constance stands outside the city walls, and is joined to those walls via a bridge across what I assume was once a moat:

Stepping through the Porte de la Gardette (Gardette Gate) doesn’t exactly transport you back in time, but it does give one a striking contradiction in which vendors of modern amenities and products coexist within a fortress dating back to the 13th century.

So, let’s start cruising the streets of Aigues-Mortes until we get to Place Saint Louis (Saint Louis Plaza) with it’s many restaurants and cafés until we eventually reach the Porte des Moulins (Mills Gate) on the southwest wall:

Слава Україні! (Slava Ukraini!)