Toulouse to Cahors (Quercy Region)

Day 27. Toulouse to Cahors. Mardi 9th.

Today we loaded up the bikes again to ride to the train station to go to Cahors, north from Toulouse on the Paris train (nice train but we had to pay 20euro for our bikes!). As soon as we arrived in Cahors we felt more relaxed. We were met at the train station by helpful friendly staff who walked us across the tracks (we had thought this unneccessary until we saw a freight train shooting through the station at over 100clicks! Then we moseyed into town and found the youth hostel no problem (a 2minute ride from the station, and it's in the centre of town!). We couldn't check in yet but were hungry (lunchtime) so we went into the canteen and had lunch - one of the best deals so far. Angus had the menu which was 8.50 (a 3 course meal!). It was pretty great! Then we checked into our room, which has 5 beds but is all ours for the next few days. Then we walked to the main street and had a wander around this very cute little town. It's surrounded on 3 sides by river, and on the other sides of the river are forests and cliffs. We saw some great buildings - including a great 15th century house with wood and brick all (seemingly) randomly placed. And all the stobie poles have flower baskets hanging from them, which just makes the town streets so pretty. There is a big covered market where we bought ingredients for dinner, and also we saw a fortified medieval bridge, Pont Valentre, built in the 14th century. We then went back to the hostel to cook dinner in our room (no shared kitchen unfortunately). It was probably the fanciest meal we've done this trip... Angus opened a dozen oysters for us to share (au natural of course) and they were some of the biggest, juciest, sweetest that we have ever tasted. Simply _amazing_! Yum. Then we made a vegetable boullibasse to go with our salamon steaks cooked in the trangia frypan (our new teflon version!). A sensational meal!!