Killing Time in Toulouse

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A bit after 3am on Saturday the 31st, Halloween morning, we 3 American Palau residents got out of bed and gathered our belongings for the day's journey first to Toulouse, 3 hours away by bus, and then to Nice, another 6 or so hours via train. At a quarter to 5 we met our 4th traveling companion at the bus station and promptly boarded our Novatel shuttle. After a little less than 3 hours of half-sleeping and bobbling our heads every which way in darkness, we arrived in Toulouse. We hadn't anticipated being able to make the 8:17am train and instead opted for the noon-ish one, but realistically we could have made the earlier one given the demonic/rapid pace the driver took. That being said, we now had some 4 hours of kill in the city of Toulouse.

With over a million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, Toulouse is France's 4th largest city and the largest in the Midi-Pyrénées region. It is the unofficial capital of Occitan culture and Occitania, the region spanning Spain, France, Monaco, and Italy where Occitan, the language of the Troubadours, is/was traditionally spoken. Unfortunately the language is greatly suffering thanks to France's always having been an a$$hole with respect to accepting and promoting languages other than standard French. The only region where Occitan or a dialect of it has any official status is in the Val d'Aran, bordering Catalunya, in Spain. I was nonetheless excited to see bilingual street signs in French-Occitan, particularly given the close relationship between Catalan and Occitan.

Anyway, once out of the train station we headed toward the city's 11th Century Saint Sernice Basilica, supposedly Europe's largest romanesque cathedral. Unfortunately the weather was gross, but we still were able to sit outside and have some coffee and not-so-great-croissants. Surrounding the church that morning was a fairly large flea market along with dozens of old French and Arab men selling their goods. There wasn't anything too exciting, but I very much enjoyed the one stand with musical instruments. I was very much tempted by a very old recorder, but its 300€ price tag did not fit my budget.

Once we had our fill of that, we retraced our footsteps toward a large outdoor market consisting of mostly produce that we had passed earlier. It was nice to see given Andorra's lack of super-fresh produce. Mike and I very enticed by the stand of various shellfish and we decided to go ahead and split a half dozen oysters from Bretagne. It seemed appropriate for the cold, damp morning, despite the fact that we were nowhere near the ocean. The nice old man shucked them right there for us and in no time we were slurping them down with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. The oysters were delicious - normally I am not a huge fan of raw shellfish, but these were a cut above.

After pussyfooting around the market for a bit more, we wandered a bit more before heading back toward the train station. While we hardly saw any of the city, I was pleased with our morning. Given its only a bus ride away I definitely plan on returning to the city for a couple days sometime before my time is through here. But first, and more importantly, it was off to the French Riviera, where hopefully we'd have glorious weather and a wonderful week's vacation!

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