I spent a day at home with a cold, not much fun, but it seemed to go away quite quickly just in time for the weekend - lucky me - as we were on our way to Toulouse and I didn't want to get turned away with anything that looked like 'swine flu symptoms'. When we had booked our first trip to Toulouse we had talked about renting a car and touring the countryside - somewhere along the line - we forgot that conversation but still had booked the hotel in the suburbs. So, late afternoon we arrived in Toulouse - caught a bus to the centre of town - a metro to the end of the line - and a bus to the hotel. It was quite fun, as in daylight we could see the houses, buildings, shops and explore the new metro - very impressive. Harry spent most of his time looking at how this fully automated (no driver - but the window still has a wiper on it), safe (doors stop the customers from falling onto the tracks) and reasonably clean transport system worked while I made sure we got off at the right station. The metro was opened in 1993 and it seems there is a lot of future proofing as the platforms are long and there are wide corridors etc. It goes up hill and down dale, underground and overground. Who could believe that in France I was quietly humming:'Underground, overground, wombling free
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we
Making good use of the things that we find
Things that the everyday folks leave behind'.
By the end of the weekend we got a bit tired of this wonderful, innovative and frequent service. The 'getting tired bit' started on Saturday night, when we caught a metro from the city about 8.30 pm (we didn't want to be party poopers but we had walked all day and were feeling our age). We hopped off at the first stop for the Number 74 bus and found we had missed the last bus by 75 minutes - back on to the metro to the next stop for the Number 75 bus and guess what we had missed that by 90 minutes. In broken English someone explained to us that to catch a taxi we needed to go back to - yes - the centre of town (perhaps we should have decided to go to a party after all) but he could call for one if we had our 'mobile' - oops left that behind. Back onto the metro and we decided to stop at the main railway station - surely there must be taxis there - let me tell you they are scarce in Toulouse unlike other cities like Dublin. We eventually found a queue with a couple of taxis waiting in line and was taken back to our hotel by a driver keen on rugby. It just happened that Bristol got thrashed by Toulouse that day, but he didn't bring that up, much preferring to talk in stilted English about the All Blacks that have played for Toulouse eg Dan Carter and that Number 9 from Otago that used to play for the Crusaders (Harry spent most of the 35 euro taxi trip trying to remember his name). Back at the hotel, we flopped onto the bed and Harry remembered 'Justin Marshall' just as we looked up to see a big spider looking down at us.
Our hotel was in Saint Jean suburb, a quaint little place with a church, library, bars, lots of restaurants and quite a community spirit. There we managed to find NZ kiwifruit for breakfast and bananas, a lovely sunset and nice restaurant. And that leads us onto the food. We have concluded that the best meals are found at restaurants that do not translate their french menu into English. For our first meal out we stumbled across a 'homely' looking place with candles and a 3 course meal for 21 Euro - uh oh - we'd forgotten our Phrase book - where is Margot when we need her most? From our limited french (jambon=ham, poulet=chicken, creme brulee=yum, glace=icecream) we ordered - thinking we'd share whatever came. First course I decided not to share. I'd have the salad and leave Harry the 'Assiette de la mur' that he ordered ( 6 raw oysters, 4 prawns and 4 snails). Second course we ordered 'Faux Fillet Grille' (french for steak) and 'Saumonette Gourmande' (I thought would be salmon but turned out to be fish - and really really nice), then we had Creme Brulee (Jim would have loved it) and Dame Blanche (like a chocolate custard). We thought we did quite well considering. We had a similar experience on the Sunday before catching the plane with just as good results - but thankfully no more raw oysters as we had remembered not to order 'crevettes, bulots and huitres'.
We spent most of the weekend wandering around Toulouse which lies on the banks of the River Garonne and has a small canal network meandering through the mainly residential areas. Its the Canal du Midi - and actually joins the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea (we didn't travel the whole distance). Pierre-Paul Riquet took over a decade (well him and 12000 others) to build the 241 km canal which is now a world heritage site (UNESCO). So, when tired feet found a river and canal they hopped on a boat and enjoyed floating along in the 30 degree heat for an hour or so.
Toulouse has a wealth of history and interesting buildings so here goes...The Cathedral of Saint Etienne - is a Roman Catholic cathedral - created by a whole lot of different people, using a whole range of different designs and architecture over 10 centuries. It has a feeling of warmth as every corner is a little surprise. In places it was in need of repair, but we wandered around to peaceful organ music (played by someone up high who didn't suffer from vertigo) and looked at walnut carvings, pictures, memorials etc. I could go on about it as there are heaps of descriptions on the web about the 'rose window', the 'flamboyant west portal', the 'romanesque foundations', the 'gable belfry', the 'five bay choir, 'radiating chapels', the 'oldest stained glass window in the city', 17th century tapestries' but I won't cos I think you would have got the picture by now.
La place du Capitole - which is along one side of the square where as per usual cafes delight in selling overpriced coffees and food for tired tourists. On Sunday, when the market had disappeared we could see the design on the cobbled stones of the 12 zodiacs and months (can't remember its name but it is quite famous). The place was developed in the 19th century,and covers around two hectares. The Capitole is an impressive building which on the Saturday was taken over for a wedding (didn't see the bride but the little flower girls had on the most delightful dresses - white with rich dark red roses around the hem) but on the Sunday we had an opportunity to go inside and guess what...inside this building that houses the Town Hall and Council buildings is an amazing display of paintings by 19th century artists such as Jean-Paul Laurens, Henri Martin and Paul Gervaise. Its not even advertised - and we wandered in to initially look at the architecture as we so often do when the door is open. The paintings are not hanging but painted onto the walls. At the top of the stairs is the Salle Gervaise, a hall adorned with a series of paintings inspired by the themes of love and marriage - that's where I think most of the marriage vows are taken - how romantic in front of 19th century paintings of lovers. Then onto an amazing hall where there are giant paintings by Henri-Martin that depicting the four seasons being celebrated along the River Garonne (we trod where famous people and the artist also trod!!). 
There are lots of different types of artists. Some like those in the La place de Capitole paint or sculpture things they can see, while others paint or sculpture things they imagine. I must admit those like Martin and Gervase are easier to understand and appreciate than those that paint from imagination (I guess the mind is full of weird and wonderful ideas). I'm rambling on about this as we saw two other types of 'larger than life' art during the weekend. The first was the parade (it was the beginning of a festival and the parade first passed us on the banks of the river and then later in the evening in the centre of Toulouse). The second was an exhibit in an old water mill, rather a lovely little building, but hard to see as we negotiated a lot of screwed up paper painted in black and white. I tried to imagine what the exhibit was trying to explain - could it be how much rubbish we make and the uselessness of it - who knows? There was no explanation even in French that we could have taken away and got Margot to translate. But I guess, that actually nature has the last say with the wonderful trees and gardens we saw along the way.
The last thing for this week - Zane told us about Clustermap which shows us on a daily basis how many people have gone onto our blog. For the first 5 weeks we have had 168 visitors (59 from the UK - slightly exaggerated as everytime I go to write it that counts as one, 43 from NZ - there are now so many the little red dot is nearly obliterating NZ from the map, 27 from the UK, 8 from Australia all from Sydney so that might be Mike and Rebecca, 5 from Canada, 4 from Germany and a whole heap of countries where 1 has looked at it eg Saudi Arabia, Malta, Turkey. It makes me think that it is worth continuing to write about our journey on the other side of the world.
