Blogs from Toulouse, Midi-Pyrénées, France, Europe - page 8

Well some 17 hours after I left Toronto I arrived in Toulouse, the starting point of my journey. The plqne ride wasn't all that bad. I sat beside a couple from Swan River, Manitoba who were on their way to visit his father in Nice. Talking to them definitely made the 8 hour flight go by much faster. Didn't mqnnqge to sleep though. I arrived in Paris (with all my luggage accounted for) and immediately searched for the train station. Next time I bring this much oversized luggage I'm hiring a porter to carry it all. For some reason you can only keep the luggage trollies on the same level, which meant having to hand balm the gear up and over barriers and 7, yes 7 escalators. Anyways long story short, I managed to get my ... read more

The shopping season is in full swing here. Place du capitole is decked out in Christmas decor and the market out front is booming. ... read more

For the last three days of my Reading Week, I went to visit my cousin Marianna, wholives in Toulouse, in southwest France. Nine years ago, when she was a junior studying abroad like me, she studied in Montpelier and fell in love. Ever since then, she’s worked on and off in France, and she and her husband have lived in Toulouse for the past two years. He’s an atmospheric physicist (he studies weather patterns) and she makes websites and does other communications work for the French space agency. Her husband’s name is Paul, and he’s from Corse (Corsica), like Napoleon. The two of them are so cute. They’ve been to our house a few times for Christmas, and my mother remarked that she really enjoyed Paul’s facial expressions and expressive gestures (“Gallic shrugs,” as Agatha Christie ... read more

Barcelona definitely got a lot better after that last post was written. We found a better place to stay on priceline and ended up in a great room out of the main tourist part of town, for almost the same price as we were paying for both of us at the hostel… almost but not quite. Anyway we landed in better eating places, relaxed more - having our own room, this was possible - and wandered aimlessly less. But for some reason we didn’t manage to think about the future at all. We weren’t sure if we were going to go spend time in the mountains or head directly for Toulouse (near where we needed to meet up with Masa’s parents on September 23). We didn’t make train reservations, let alone hotel reservations. I guess we ... read more

Hello Everyone, Hope you all had a wonderful xmas. I'm still in France for the moment. I had a brilliant xmas. To be honest not much to report just seeing if this damn thing works. To be fair I'm the worst computer operator in the world-as all of you who helped me with my i-pod before I left already know!!!! Hope it does work-otherwise I'll do a lot of unread pointless emailing. Gonna miss you all! Sorry if some of you haven't heard from me in a while or didn't know I had your email address (mwa ha haaaaa!) I just copy and pasted my entire address book!! If this is the case...guess what I'm going travelling!!!! Anyway all, have a wonderful 2006, stay in touch. I will try to send as many personal e-mails as ... read more