Toulouse

Day 25. Boule d'Amont to Toulouse. Dimanche 7th.

This morning we packed and cleaned up the Gite (after a chilled out breakfast outside enjoying the beautiful view!), then left for Ille sur tet. We caught the train from there to Perpignan - and it was _so_ much easier without so much luggage (Thanks to Jasper for taking our camping gear!)! We then had about 1.5hrs in Perpignan so we had lunch outside the train station and grabbed a take-away coffee to finish it off. Oh, and we had a massive revelation - there is a spot at the end of the platform where you can wheel across all the tracks (instead of carrying the bikes down a set of stairs, then back up on the other side of the tracks) so we saved ourselves a lot of carrying (well, I admit Angus does all the carrying and I just stand around with all the rest of the gear, trying to look useful). We had a fairly uneventful trip to Narbonne, where we had a quick ride around the city to have a quick drink break and check out the massive (and very impressive) cathedral. We then found our way back to the train station and boarded our train to Toulouse and it was our first experience with a really busy train with a massive bike area. We found a hotel in Toulouse (not the fanciest, but we found a free wifi network here, so not all bad!), had dinner, went for a stroll in the evening and had a drink in a pub on a lovely place with a fountain in the middle, surrounded by trees and all lit up. Very nice!

Day 26. Toulouse. Lundi 8th.

We set out early to explore Toulouse. It's quite large - about 390000 people, but about 130000 of them are students, so most of the people here are young, and there are heaps of cafes, cheap eateries and bars. We wandered down to the river which was nice but not particularly special, and then into the old quarter. After going to the tourist office (we could actually find this one, the one in Perpignan is still lost to us...) we visited the Capitole building and the Salle des Illustres which was _way_ too much for me... gold paint everywhere, frescoes on every wall, ceiling and column... it was just a bit much really. We checked out a pretty amazing church, the Eglise des Jacobins, which is the mother church of the Dominican friars. It was built in the 11th and 12th centuries (it took 170 years to build) and it's really really impressive. There are seven columns down the middle of the building, and they are 22m high, and surrounded by huge stained-glass windows. It's actually really bare inside, with few decorations or sculptures or paintings as you get in most churches over here. We went into the cloisters also which are really pretty gardens surrounded by ornate covered archways. We also visited the Basilique St-Sernin is apparently France's largest and most complete Romanesque structure. It didn't grab us particularly, though the organ was being tuned as we were in there, which was interesting! After our picnic lunch in the Place du Capitole (we got rained on... how rude!!!) we went to a bar for a chill out for a while (and escape the rain) and met a strange New Zealander who wanted to talk to us about everything under the sun (but particularly the rugby... - NZ just lost to France for those who don't know! And Australia lost to England!), so we left as soon as possible. Then we had a stroll through the old quarter towards the Musee des Augustins, which has a fantastic collection of statues (Roman age) and a lovely church, and some really pretty gardens in the 14th century cloisters. We didn't see the entire collection as we were feeling weary, so spent a bit of time enjoying the garden before moving on. We found a great place for our late afternoon snack - a turkish snack bar - that is Turkish sweets - everything you can imagine and more, all sweet & sugary accompanied by great coffee! Very cool! Then we've spent a bit of time this afternoon thinking about options for the next two weeks before we go to visit Yvonne in Germany. We are planning on going to the Dordogne region and trying to visit some wineries and caves with prehistoric artwork.