I’m in France for a few weeks, enjoying a much-needed summer vacation. It’s been a while since I posted anything to the blog, let’s see if I can remedy that a few times during my trip.
I arrived in Toulouse on Friday morning, June 30, and had to wait in the airport for an extra hour for my baggage to arrive. My Boston flight landed in Paris, and I had only an hour to make the connecting flight. I sailed through customs and inter-terminal security, reaching my flight with 10 minutes to spare. My suitcase was not so lucky, and had to wait for the next CDG-TLS flight. Fortunately it was just an hour.
The seat next to me on the flight to Toulouse was a friendly, well-behaved 3-year old. She took a liking to me, and her Mom was OK with it, so I played and talked with her a bit during the one hour ride. Sang a few French kids songs I knew and animated her stuffed animal a bit (she kept dropping it on the floor beneath my seat). Good times.
Took the shuttle bus to Toulouse, walked 3 minutes to Hotel Héliot, left my bags with the clerk, and went to lunch at Café Maurice at Place Saint-Georges. It was OK, but the salmon tartare has about twice as much raw salmon as one can reasonably eat. I left much of it over. It was fairly chilly out (15C-18C, intermittent light drizzle), not great for a walking tour. I barely slept on the plane (though I did complete five or six French crosswords) and was exhausted, so despite best advice to the contrary, I went back to the hotel, checked in, and slept for seven hours.
For dinner I took the hotel clerk’s recommendation and ate at Le Bon Vivre on Place du Président Wilson. I had “gazpacho andalou” (which I would have called simply “gazpacho”) and breaded veal cutlet with noodles. The soup was very good, the pasta was excellent, and the veal was OK — again, far too much veal for one sitting. I don’t remember restaurants in France serving such large portions. The restaurant is very much a “farm to table” kind of place, featuring both local ingredients and local producers. I was seated facing a wall-mounted screen that ran a full series of marketing videos like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QGDvwIt64U. The sound was off, but the closed captions were on, so I got to practice my reading while watching the smiling faces of various farmers and cattle- and goat-raisers talk about their work and their relationship with the restaurant. It was very interesting, actually.
I had a little trouble going to sleep, but after reading (Les fiancés de l’hiver), I slept from about 1AM – 9AM on Saturday, July 1. I spent the morning writing up some long-overdue pre-work for my language immersion course that starts tomorrow. I ate lunch at The Flower’s Café on Pl. Roger Salengro: a “bagel” with mozzarella and sun-dried tomato and a side salad. I indulged in my first cup of coffee since leaving Boston (I figured mixing coffee and jet lag was not a good idea), and also a slice of almond tarte with berries in syrup for dessert. I probably should have skipped dessert, as I felt unpleasantly full for much of the afternoon.
After lunch it was still chilly, maybe 18-20, overcast and on-and-off drizzling. But it’s my last full day in Toulouse, so I toured the city anyway. I followed the self-paced walking tour that I found at Visiter Toulouse en 1 jour : les essentiels de la Ville Rose. :
- La place du Capitole: lots of people in a big open square in front of an 18th century capital building. Big and imposing. A lot of brick, which is quite common in Toulouse. Apparently much cheaper and more locally available than stone. Interesting “occidentie cross” of metal inlaid in the stone on the ground in the center of the square. Zodiac signs at each corner. I spent while looking at the ceiling fresque in the arcade opposite the Capitol. 29 panels painted in 1993 or so depicting various famous Toulousiens or events in Toulouse history. The panels at eye-level of each column of the arcade provided explanations.
- La rue de taur: I followed the blog’s recommendation and went to La Compagnie du Chocolat, purchased some crystallized violet leaves. Haven’t tried one yet. Had a nice chat with the shopkeep. Browsed briefly the various bookstores and open-air book stalls along the street.
- La bibliothèque du Périgord is a public library in a very nice, modern-ish building. I walked the length of the high-ceilinged, vaulted reading room. It was well populated with patrons, and very silent. Nice windows on either end, some interesting art over the entrance.
- La Basilique Saint-Sernin: the largest Romanesque (as opposed to Gothic) church in Europe, it was completed around 1120, making it 900 years old. I took the free guided visit led by a French-speaking seminarian. It’s a big place with a lot of relics and various small chapels and artworks. Nothing too remarkable, but I’ve never been one for churches. Still, it’s the jewel of Toulouse, so I figured it was worth 45 minutes. One curious thing I learned: if you look up the length of the nave from the fount at the very back, by the western door, you see that the fount is lined up with the door and with the center axis of the nave. But the altar and the canopy at the far other end, the eastern tip, is a bit off-center to the left. The guide asserted that this is the case in many latin-cross European churches, and so unlikely to be an accident. Apparently there is no firm record for why things were laid out this way, but the prevailing explanation is that the latin cross floor-plan of the churches represent the crucifixion, with Chirst’s feet at the far end of the nave, Christ’s arms extended to the north and south transept, and Christ’s head at the apse. He is often represented in death with his head nodding down and to the left, and so correspondingly the apse was made to be off-center the left. Interesting phenomenon and evocative explanation.
- Arnaud Bernard, le quartier «street art»: Fairly underwhelming. I have a feeling I didn’t find the main parts where much art is visible. I didn’t look that hard.
- Le Couvent des Jacobins: I was getting tired at this point, and didn’t look to hard for this landmark. As it happens, I wandered by it on my way to somewhere else, but it was already closed for the day. Not much to see from the outside.
At that point, I had had enough for the day and gave up on the self-guided tour.
Somewhere during the tour I did a little shopping. I bought toothpaste at a Monoprix and tried to buy shampoo, but the selection was bewildering and too fancy. The Monoprix website offers basic shampoo, but I couldn’t find it in the store. Asked somebody unsuccessfully, then gave up. I later bought some at a Carrefour City without difficulty. I tried to buy a cleaning cloth for my glasses at Les Binocles Toulousaines, Rue Gabriel, but the very friendly man wouldn’t take my money. He insisted I take the high-quality cloth for free. I thanked him and chatted briefly before leaving. Around 6:30pm I bought 130 grams of a semi-soft cow cheese from Fromagerie Verlac, rue Arnaud Bernard, and a small loaf of bread at Maison Janin just next store.
I was headed for the Couvent de Jacobins when I decided I could use some social contact. My map showed me that I was not too far from a games store, Le Passe Temps, so I walked over there and asked if by any chance they knew of a game-salon or other store where one could sit and play games with others. I introduced the question and off-beat, but the sales person gave me a broad smile and said nothing could be more natural to ask in a games store. Friendly people, these Toulousians. He wrote out for me three places to go, two «Bars aux jeux» and one video game parlor. «BlastoDice» was in a part of town I walked through before, so instead I headed over to «Les Tricheurs» by the Garonne river.
Upon reaching the river, I discovered I had stumbled on … a WateRugby festival. Rugby is a big, big sport here in Toulouse, and in south-west France in general. Toulouse is hosting the Rugby World Cup 2023 in September, and there’s lots of signage everywhere. While I knew rugby was a thing, I had never encountered Water Rugby before. It’s a friendly, no-contact version of the sport played on large floating raft, with the river itself as the perimeter of the playing field. Players wear swim trunks and vault into the water cum end-zone to score a point. The organizers attach a long floating bridge for the teams to enter and exit the raft, then remove it for each 15-minute match. The ~7-person teams file on and off the raft for each match while several hundred fans watch and drink beer in stands erected on the bank of the river. There was a play-by-play announcer broadcasting over a loud-speaker, lots of food trucks and merchandise tents set up in the small park between the street and the river. The whole thing is a deliberately silly marketing event set up by various rugby organizations. Ridiculous.
I watched for a while, then headed over to Les Tricheurs. It was humming, with a couple dozen parties playing games and eating/drinking inside and out. I presented myself to the host and asked if he could help me find playing partners. He said something might turn up, but that he couldn’t really act as match-maker. I canvassed the place and made one attempt to offer myself as an additional player to a group that was just finishing, but without success. So I ordered a beer and sat at a table by myself for a bit, hoping someone suitable would turn up.
As luck would have it, a 50-year-old Frenchman named Fred showed up 20 minutes later under the mistaken understanding that there was an organized trivia night happening (it was slated for Monday, not Saturday). I saw my chance and invited him to play. We hit it off quite well and spent an enjoyable couple of hours talking and playing games (one was named Patchwork, I forget the name of the other). Fred arrived just last week in Toulouse, where he’ll be working for four months as an organizer of the Rugby World Cup. He was outgoing and friendly, and we swapped what we knew of Toulouse. He took my phone number, saying he might make the trip out to Avignon for a couple of days if he gets bored of Toulouse. He’s from Pays de la Loire, and hasn’t spent much time here in the south of France. I’ll be amused if he follows up.
Fred and I left the bar around 10:30pm, walked back towards the city center together until our paths diverged. I made myself a small picnic in my room consisting of bread and cheese, then wrote up this bulletin. Tomorrow I need to check out at 11am, and my train to Carcassonne doesn’t leave until 3:15pm, so I have some time to finish the rest of the Toulouse walking tour. Good night!