Tuesday 19 and Wednesday 20 April 2016

Our resident photographer has submitted these shots of Monts, during our Tuesday morning stroll before taking our taxi to the train station

 

Our trains from Tours to Toulouse are uneventful.  We successfully change trains at Bordeaux and arrive in Toulouse on schedule at 4.50pm.  A taxi to the hotel, another booking.com triumph, we drop our bags and walk around for a couple of hours exploring this delightful city.  They call Toulouse the ‘Pink City’ because of the colour of the natural stonework.  It’s local terracotta and very pretty.  All the streets are cobblestone.

 

We eat at a bistro in the main square and the waiter offers us an English menu.  I ask for a French one, as I want to confirm my lack of skill.  However I do identify the salade avocat et crevette as a prawn and avocado salad and feel very smug (although not as smug as Colin).  I am immensely amused to see the English translation as “The Salad with Shrimps and Lawyers”, so of course immediately order it in celebration of you, LHB.  Not that you guys and gals are prawns of any sort, or even shellfish.

Our friends, Di and Garry McDonald, are in the air right now from Sydney, due to join us in Toulouse at 8.30am tomorrow.  Di will look beautiful, no matter how jetlagged they are (we hate that), and so we retire to our hotel for a relatively early night in pursuit of the beauty miracle.

Predictably the miracle by-passed us, but we show characteristic fortitude and don our rain hats in deference to the drizzle, as we head out, leaving a note at reception for the McDonalds to call us on arrival.  We are so smart that either of us could be mistaken for Brenda Blethwyn as DC Vera Stanhope.  Fortunately it’s just light rain.  After breakfast we stroll to the food markets, which Rick Stein says are the best in the world.  Indeed they are fabulous,  with the expected fresh food but the biggest Limousin beef ribs I have ever seen in my life.  This photo does not show the scale but trust me, these chops were at least 400mm high.

 We get a phone message from Garry and Di reporting that they are stuck in Munich because of a strike by the security staff and will not arrive in Toulouse until this afternoon.  Cherrie and I continue our pursuit of loveliness and walk briskly across the cobblestones in the hope that the kilojoules will rebel and fall away.  Again we are forsaken.

Cherrie is particulary taken with the shutters

We walk down to the River Garonne and the Pont Neuf

and marvel how the vehicles negotiate these narrow streets, mindful that we will be doing this in our rental car all too soon.  The stuff of nightmares really.  We eat a light lunch of fish (which perhaps the English menu translated as Poison) at one of the myriad of cafes on the top floor of the markets, and continue our stroll.

The McDonalds arrive at about 3pm, looking rested and happy despite having left home more than 30 hours previously.  I just want to punch them.  But I show uncharacteristic restraint, and the four of us walk through and around the pink city.    Garry has identified a restaurant for dinner through Trip Advisor but shortly after  5pm we are ready for a drink and sit ourselves at an outside bar table in the Place de Capitol

 in the expectation of service.  False expectation.  We move to the next bar, but again no service.  Not too dispirited, because it is incredibly windy and so not terribly comfortable in the square and so we head off in the direction of the restaurant in pursuit of an alternative aperitif place.  We finally find a small place which looks nice and we take a seat.  Once we get the wine list we are amused to discover that we are in an Italian bar and restaurant with not a French choice of either drinks or food.  But we are in need of alcohol and so order.  The wine is horrible but we knock it back regardless.  We head off to dinner with Garry navigating on his phone with the help of Google Maps.  We walk for a while,  being careful to avoid the cars which share the pavements with us, and then back track a bit.  Garry is tapped politely on the shoulder by a passing cyclist, by way of suggesting we get off the road.  We continue to walk until we learn a handy navigational trick.  It’s best if the phone is held the right way up.  We find the restaurant, in the Place Capitole.  The Maitre’ d explains that the restaurant is booked out but we could dine in the basic room downstairs if we wish.  We wished, we didn’t mind eating in the storeroom so long as the food was good.  The restaurant does not accept guests until 7pm so we sit at an outdoor table (the wind has died down) and start on our dinner wines…a beautiful Chablis and a superb Bordeaux red.  Shortly after 7pm we are escorted to the downstairs room which is, in fact, a perfectly nice dining room with white linen on the tables and a perfectly pleasant atmosphere.  No English translation here, so no lawyers on the menu.  We talk, we laugh, we eat, we drink and we see our friends start to fade by about 9pm.  An early night, before commencing our wine and food tour tomorrow.

Like we need more food and wine.