La Premiere Semaine est histoire

We have now officially been here a week. Actually that really happens at about 7 p.m. our time this evening and I am writing this at about 11 a.m. Sunday morning. Today is cool and cloudy, but we had two terrific days on Friday and Saturday, as you will see in the pictures. The air is still quite cool, but if you were in the sun, it was quite lovely.

Our routine has been somewhat established. We are still struggling with sleep, as we awake about 4 a.m. (what else is new – but in this case, we don’t want to get up at that time). The irony is that the apartment is very quiet and we can’t sleep, whereas in Mexico, we had church bells, roosters, and donkeys and we slept until 7 each morning. However, we are 9 hours ahead and jet-lag has certainly disrupted our internal clocks.

Beyond the early rising, we have continued to exercise. I get out about 8 a.m. and try to do 4 miles. There is certainly lots more to explore in a city of this size than there was in PV. I can walk along (and across) the Garonne River or along the Canal du Midi, which is one of the many canals that you can “barge” through, or just head downtown and walk among the rabbit warren of streets that make up the central part of the city (centre ville). Two days ago, I thought I would walk north along the Garonne and then along the Canal du Midi, but mistook the Canal de Garonne for that and suddenly found myself way off the beaten track. An hour and a half (and six miles), I found my way back home.

Much of the middle part of our days involves a visit to the Place de Capitole. It is sort of the Pioneer Place of Toulouse. We visit nearly every noon hour for a glass of wine and an hour’s worth of people watching. We sit (as you can see from this picture of Polley) and watch the world go by.


Cars, bikes, motorized and foot driven scooters, rollerblades, skateboards and those on foot all converge on this corner. Incredibly, with people going every which way, no collisions occur.



There are also strange and outrageous people, as this girl with the bouquet of flowers in her hair. That gives Toulouse a very Portland feel as well.


The Place becomes the center of activity both during the day and at night.



Saturday morning saw little miniature Rugby fields set up with kids playing a round of games.


There are markets, displays, and various exhibitions.

Saturday was my birthday, so Polley and I took advantage of glorious weather to venture down to the Place de Capitole. You can see how blue and clear the sky was.


For my birthday lunch we shared a wonderful bacon/onion galette and a duck gizzard and duck breast salad. Really good and not very expensive. Despite the weak dollar, we are not finding things as expensive as we were lead to believe. We, of course, do not eat out as often as we did in Mexico, but with a very well stocked grocery store (hypermarché) a block away, there is not the need. Cheese, paté, salami and lots of inexpensive wine, are all plentiful, so we actually had not eaten out at all until the lunch on Saturday. We then had a birthday dinner, that was less than terrific, but we will just avoid that place in the future.

After the lunch for my Bon Anniversaire, we walked up past St. Sernin and found this religious re-enactment of the women at the tomb of Christ.


It had a strong sense of the early religious drama of the church in the Middle Ages. It was well rehearsed and included music as well as dramatic dialogue.




Very interesting and just one of those things we stumbled across.

Speaking of stumbling across things. Polley and I discovered an open-air market (marché) that operates nearly everyday. We intend to take advantage of that beginning Monday and hope to add to our variety of daily delicacies. More on that later.

We have, here and there, tasted some local delicacies. We stopped in at a pub (I call it that because if is a faux British pub called the “George and Dragon” to sample “Banana Bread Beer.”

In my best French, I ordered the bottle only to discover the barkeep was English and had little time for my foray into the French language!

We have also decided, sort of in the tradition of our UP trips to London and Austria, to make every Wednesday a field trip day. This Wednesday were taking the train to Lourdes, the city of miracles. In doing some research, I was amazed to discover it is the second most visited city in France and has the second largest number of hotels after Paris! In a way, I am glad I discovered this after I got the tickets. Otherwise, we might not have had the courage to go. Also please to report, that with my birthday, Polley and I will both travel the rails at Senior Citizen discount. Next blog will, no doubt, be a report on our adventures in Lourdes!