Toulouse

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Friday 31st October
Halfway to Toulouse we stopped at a place called Agen. With difficulty we found a parking space. We had our lunch in the motor home and then started our exploration.. The streets were deserted. At first we thought it was odd, but then we realised that the south of France, shops and boutiques shut at mid-day for longer hours. The old town is beautiful but a lot of restoration work is taking place.
We phoned our friends in Toulouse to let them know that we are only some 80 miles away. They are expecting us around 6pm. Just enough for us to visit Agen, do some shopping and take the highway to Toulouse. Linda wanted to buy some presents to our mother’s friend.
The speciality of this region of France is prunes. Prunes with everything even with chocolate. At first I say ‘yak’, but when I tested it! Well a marriage made in heaven, it was so delicious we even bought some as a present for our mother’s friend.

We reached Toulouse right at the peak hour, the motorway traffic was very dense but moving. Works on the road made our navigation system behave badly, recalculating the route and advising us the wrong route. Worst! I took the wrong exit. We ended up in a village few miles away from the destination village.
Finally at 6:30pm we made it. Our friend Karim was waiting for us. Karim is our friend from England. He was visiting his son who own a car dealership in the outskirt of Toulouse. We reversed the motor home into a place already reserved for us. We haven’t seen Haniffi the son of Karim for some 15years when he was at boarding school in England. We would’ve never recognised him if we met in the street. That teenager had grown to be a successful business man married and a child of 5.
Haniffi took the best car for the occasion an new Audi A5 and whisked us to the centre of TOULOUSE.
The town was very lively. The night life was just getting into swing. Toulouse centre is grandiose. The architectures of some of the building is awesome. Karim and Haniffi took us everywhere there is some thing to see, especially where Karim use to hang out in his youth.
Karim wanted to take us to a new restaurant called ENTRE-COTES, but the queue was well into two hours to get a table. It’s all the rage this restaurant now, well over 50 people were queuing for hours. We decided that we just have got the time and gave it a miss. Instead we spent the rest of the evening in a nice restaurant called ’La Boucherie’. At midnight we returned to the motor home for the night, but Haniffi insisted on spending the night either in his house or at least on the ground of his farm where he lives with wife. We parked the motor home in a huge modern barn on the ground of the farm, in fact we like there so much, we decided to spend two nights in the moterhome rather than troubling his wife to make us a bed etc…
Next Morning we visited Karim’s mum. We love her very much and enjoyed her company when she visited her son Karim in England.
A 10mns visit lasted 3 hours with the obligatory couscous prepared in advance for us and served in the proper wooden bowl.
Delicious! You should see Linda enjoying the couscous

Around 1pm we returned to Toulouse. This time we took the metro (tubes) and stopped halfway to continue on foot. The weather was just right and the town very quiet. Ideal. Karim took more time to show around. The day visit seemed to be complimentary to the night visit; It was as if it was a different place.
Unfortunately Karim received a phone call about his mum being taken to hospital for an abnormal increase in blood pressure. We rushed back to his mums house, we arrived just in time to see Karim’s mum being taken to hospital. Once in Hospital her blood pressure was stabilised but she was kept for further observations.
All in all thanks to Karim and Haniffi we had a wonderful experience in Toulouse. Many thanks to all of them and sincerely wish their mum a speedy recovery.

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