With spacious rooms priced at about 90 euros a night, Les Coquilles highlighted the appeal of being in a place mostly overlooked by foreigners.

Forty minutes west of Palavas-les-Flots, the brawny old port town of Sète was built in 1666 to encourage commerce on the Canal des Deux Mers, which is today better known as the Canal du Midi. The port boomed after the French conquest of Algeria in 1830.

The outskirts of Sète are gritty and industrial, but the heart of the city, which is built on a series of canals, has a sepia-toned, 19th-century charm exemplified by Le Grand Hotel, a delightful three-star property with great canal views and an atmospheric interior atrium with wrought-iron balconies. Sète, long well-known for its tieilles — pastry tarts stuffed with a ragout of octopus in a spicy tomato sauce — has recently become a great food town, too. I had a quick but delicious lunch of deep-fried merlan (whiting) and panisses (fried chickpea-flour beignets) at Fritto, a French style fish-and-chips shop, and rushed off to the Quai de la Resistance to catch the jousting on the canal.

The first jousting tournament in Sète took place on July 29, 1666 to celebrate construction of the port. Originally, tournaments opposed young bachelors in a blue boat to married men in a red one. Before the tournament starts the jousters parade with an oboist and a drummer playing the traditional jousting tune. Then the battle begins, with the jousters using their spears to try and make their opponents fall into the canal. In Sète, jousting takes place from June to early September, and the tournament schedule is available from the tourist office.