Toulouse
We needed a day's R & R catching up on some washing and sleep, and being entertained by the children, who put on a "show" for us. I was really impressed, they each had their parts to play and had made up the stories themselves. Not too keen on the one about me wanting to go for a swim when I was on the plane and Grandad pushed me out of the door?
Interesting ride - although it was an underground train - so many people getting on and off, the train soon got packed. Lots of French conversation - I couldn't understand a word, even though I did 5 years of French at school and can make some sense of written French, people talk so quickly and one word merges into another that I was easily lost.
We got off at Capitole which is the end of the line and walked upstairs into the heat and bright sunshine of the Place du Capitale. The kids headed to the play area and David and I walked over to the information centre, got some maps and info about what to see and do and we all headed over to a cafe to have a coffee and check out points of interest.
First impressions a of Toulouse? The square (Place du Capitale) is a place for families, the play area, a lovely fountain that shoots up water and kids try their luck at running through without getting wet, lots of trees to sit under, the heat was well into the 30's. Plenty of cafes with tables and chairs under umbrellas and lots of people just enjoying the atmosphere. From the square are several 'roads', these cobblestone roads are so narrow, and shared by cars, vans, bikes, pedestrians, there are bollards allowing the pedestrians a small area of relative safety from the vehicles each side of the road. The buildings alongside the roads are up to 5 stories high giving some shelter from the heat. The buildings have balconies surrounding the windows on each level, the higher you go t he fancier the wrought iron. The shops below have interesting displays, at the moment all the shop windows display signs saying 'soldes' which I thought must be a very popular brand name until I realised it meant 'sale'.
Apparently in France all the shops are allowed to have sales twice a year and they must all have them at the same time, lucky for us that time is now! I am fascinated by these narrow streets, they are so old, so steeped in history and there are areas in all the big European cities that have them. They have been used for commerce in one way or another for hundreds of years and the shops still look great and must be making a profit, in spite of the big department stores and malls. We will go back several times I am sure and hopefully get to know these shops much better!.
Rachel and the kids left us to our own devices and went home for a swim. So the first thing we did was to buy a SIM card for our mobiles. It was a little daunting trying to buy something relatively technical when you have no common language. We had a very helpful assistant who spoke a little English, but did you know that even hand signs are different in French? No matter, we got everything organised and were up and running within a couple of hours.
The heat was quite draining so we just caught the little tourist train that went around the city centre pointing out the places of interest, just about 30 mins and gave us a good idea of what to look for when we came back.
We went back to the Metro, and after carefully reading the French instructions, and having listened very carefully to Rachel when she got the tickets earlier, we bought one that said " for two people". However only one of us was allowed through the ticket stalls, no matter how many times we tried, it wouldn't let David through. Fortunately a porter who understood a little English took pity on us and after giving David the third degree, let him through. We had apparently bought a return ticket and not a ticket for two people!
So we arrived back at the Tournefeuille station and James came and picked us up. A pretty good day for our first day out !
No comments:
Post a Comment