Everything Toulouse

1 Apr - Day 17

The drive to Toulouse was smooth as. The French autoroutes (motorways) are excellent and French drivers know how to handle their speed (and because of this, believe they have every right to be impatient). The speed limit on dry autoroute is 130km, and if raining 110km. I put the cruise control on 120km, and even then got over taken by 99% of cars. We did make one stop to take a photo of the car by a pretty lake (and two toll collection stops- no photos). This will be for a seperate blog I am going to write for Peugeot, to try and win an iPad 3 in their customer competition.

We walked into town not long after checking in. Toulouse is a small city and almost everything is within walking distance - the Jit and Marcus walking distance that is. Went past the Saint Sernin Basilica (which we will come back to for a closer look),

and found the main square where the Capitole (Opera House) is. Being Sunday, all non-food shops were closed, so we very quickly found ourselves down by the Garonne, yes the very same one as in Bordeaux.

There were lots of people sun bathing in the sunny warm weather by the river. We walked past a river cruise boat departing in 20 minutes, so we hopped on. It gave us a glimpse of the city from the river, and took us through a lock which only dropped 0.5m to the level of one of 3 canals in the city. Our guide book says one of the canals connects the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, but is no longer used commercially.

We decided not to return to the starting point, and disembarked up-river, with a whole bunch of other people thinking that we would walk back to the city with these like-minded folks. However, these like-minded folks produced tickets to enter some kind of exhibition for the security staff.

I was up next and so in my most confident manner, making it look like we got off deliberately, told the security in English that we got off to walk back to Toulouse. He said OK and waved us through.

The exhibition turned out to be an international expo hosted by Toulouse. The hall we stumbled into had jacuzzis, pianos and Bang and Olufsson hifi gear on show. As we were let in for free, we decided to have a quick look around and hifi had the pull.

Just before we arrived back at our hotel, Jit Hu (Marcus' cousin on his mothers side) sent a text saying that he is cooking dinner. This was a surprise as I was expecting to eat out in a restaurant, and I didn't think his flat was big enough. Wrong assumption number two for the day.

Whilst Jit Hu has a full time job cooking at the casino restaurant, he has been helping one of his Vietnamese classmate from cooking school, who started a Vietnamese restaurant a month ago. The restaurant is closed on Sundays, so it was a dinner for family, friends and hanger-ons there.

It was just brilliant evening for so many reasons. Marcus and I have not had rice and stir-fried for 2 and something weeks, so the spread of beef and kai-lan vegetable, deep fried spring roll, pepper prawns, omelette and soup was just what we needed.

Philippe, Duc Hanh's husband was the only non-immigrant French person there, with one Moroccan, Mohammed, Thuy and her husband Lee, and of course Duc Hanh, all Vietnamese, Jit Hu and us. They were all prattling on in French, so I didn't have a clue and Marcus a 25% clue.

Mohammed was hilarious. He showed me photos of his recent trip to Paris with Philippe, all taken at night. They were terrible, the flash was either too bright or too dim. Philippe kept saying "Ces't moi" because I could not tell which was who (if that is an English phrase at all). Luckily Jit Hu was not on the trip, otherwise it would have been "who was Hu" hahahahahaha.

Mohammed did most of the entertaining that evening. He gave Thuy a hard time about the time she went to 3 muslim butchers consecutively, who all declined politely, to buy halal pork. He told Philippe that the French can't tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese, and that all the sushi restaurants in France were run by the Chinese, pretending to be Japanese and getting away with it. And being a rugby fan, he supported the All Blacks because the French team was a bunch of grumpy ...... Toulouse is the capital of rugby in France, and if I recall correctly, Tana U and Dan C played here for a stint.

All too soon, the evening was over, everyone had to work the next day except us. I saw Duc Hanh getting a French farewell kiss, you know the one where you touched both cheeks and kiss the air. So I asked if I could give Duc Hanh and Thuy one of those too. My first ever was with Duc Hanh, so I am no longer a French kiss virgin. Thuy said we can do that later as she is on the same metro, I suggested now and later, so I can get some practice.

Jit Hu walked back to our hotel with us upon disembarking the metro before heading home himself.

2 April - Day 18

Today we decided to visit La Cite de l'espace. Toulouse is also the aeronautics and space capital of France, and La Cite is the space museum.

There were plenty of foundation science stuff on weather, satellites, Mars, weightlessness (try zero kg Jenny Craig!), big bang and etc. I had a go at being weather presenter which amused Marcus a little.

It was really good to see the real life replica of space station Mir. But really, the Americans rule the roost when it comes to space exploration and travel. Most video presentations were American. They dubbed French over Leonardo de Caprio's presentation of the Hubble telescope shown in 3D on IMAX.

Lunch was at the Astronaut Restaurant. We asked about the plat de jour, and the maitre de said the chef was Algerian, and it was lamb with spices, apricot, prunes and nuts. We both had that and it was delish, the lamb just melted in my mouth. Couldn't understand why everyone else was having fish and chips, burgers and sausages. Ours was at least 3 euros cheaper too, at 8.90.

After returning to our hotel for a break, we eagerly await dinner at the best kebab place in Toulouse with Jit Hu. And it did not disappoint, kebab wrapped in fromage filled naan and frites. Yum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 April - Day 19

Today was supposed to be an easy day, one cathedral and Musee. We went back to Saint Sernin and had a look inside, We visited Mediatech, a multimedia public libarary housing dvd, cd, books on music video and media.

We dropped in on Musee des Augustine which had a surprisingly good collection of Roman sculptures and Renaissance paintings. Europe is so rich in history, you find some real gems in the middle of nowhere, as we did here.

Later in the evening, we met up with Jit Hu. We went shopping for dinner and ate at his apartment. It was a simple but delicious meal of parma ham, cheese, pate, salmon and bread with a nice bottle of Bordeaux red wine.