Toulouse, France: The Adventure Begins

The Travel Architect

Aug 25

Our first post-pandemic European vacation (for the record, The Whole Damn English COVID Christmas Saga was mid-pandemic and not a vacation, per se, but a family visit), was an "Andorra sandwich," with France as the bread (as it should be, what with their boules and baguettes and brioche and all). Our focus in France was the Midi-Pyrenees (with just a dash of Languedoc-Roussillon thrown in for good measure), and as such, Toulouse became our start and end point.

Our blissfully uneventful two-leg flight started off appropriately: with French macarons, a confection I have never made, nor will ever make.
So. Much. Work.

You know how sometimes you're not particularly interested in a place, but for reasons of practicality you need to go there, and then you start looking into it and your excitement builds and builds and before you know it you're wishing you had booked more time there?

Yeah, that didn't happen with Toulouse.

Don't get me wrong, Toulouse is a fine city, full of history, art, and culture. It's just that nothing there was really jumping out at me as a Must See! Must Do! But that was okay because what we really needed from La Ville Rose, the pink-hued capital of France's Occitanie region, was a place to readjust our inner clocks, get our bearings, and acclimate our brains to French.

With that in mind, I splurged on a jetlag-soothing suite on Place Wilson in the heart of the historic centre-ville . . .

. . . where I had great fun playing with the magic glass.

Dinner that first evening was revelatory. A lifelong hater of anchovies, I discovered that, when not squished into a tin like sardines—ironically—and bathed in saline solution, but rather fresh from the sea, they can be quite good.

Not, like, eat them every day good. Not pain au chocolat good. But good.

The next day—our one and only full day in Toulouse—I left the husband to sleep off his jet lag and took an aimless early morning stroll.

Upon my return, the husband was donning his running gear, so out we went for an early morning run, our favorite way to shake off the time warp cobwebs and explore a new city. To the husband's great annoyance, I made him stop every few steps so I could photograph door after charming door. (Hint, hint: doors posts are coming.)

This worked up a mighty big appetite, one that screamed "carbohydrates!" (Note: there are no other breakfast choices in France. It's carbohydrates or bust.) In an amazing show of restraint, especially given how travel-addled my executive functions were, I didn't partake of any American donuts . . .

. . . though I was sorely tempted.

Instead we strolled a few blocks to the old town's main square, Place du Capitole, where several restaurants were offering the same basic (but delectable) prix fixe fare: croissants, baguette, butter, jam, honey, and coffee. For the unFrenchified, the butter here isn't like what you get at Albertson's or Kroger's. It's . . . it's . . . indescribably good. Let's just say that, when in France, I could eat baguette and butter all day, every day.

A lover of European markets, we made sure to make several circuits through Marché Victor Hugo, where every fish, meat, fruit, vegetable, and pastry you've ever heard of (and hundreds you haven't) beckon (and sometimes repel).

Then we moseyed down to and along the Garonne River to admire the views of the Pont Neuf (New Bridge) . . .

. . . where we got a glimpse of a little red man. I've since learned that it's the creation of Toulousian artist James Colamina, who has been called "the Banksy of sculpture," and that there are little red Colamina statues hidden in plain sight throughout Toulouse, and still more that pop up from time to time in different cities around the globe.

Finally, we had a wander through Le Jardin des Plants . . .

. . . before ambling along the Canal du Midi.

We stopped at a market because you never know what treasures you'll find in an overseas grocery store.

It's important to stock up on interesting flavors

Then it was back to the hotel—the Tour de France needed watching and we needed to rest up, for the next day we would get our rental car and make our way south to the Pyrenees where the husband would answer the call of the col . . .