I decided that Toulouse would be a good place to fly into, since it is generally centrally located for the places we were going, and it has a big airport. We left DC in the evening and flew all night, which is typical. I can't sleep on planes though, so I watched the movie. They showed Chocolat which was quite appropriate since it was about life in a small French village. We had a stopover in Amsterdam for several hours. Getting off of the plane was quite an experience because we were expecting much more hassle than we got. In the US, international flights are subject to extensive passport checking, customs inspection, etc. But there didn't seem to be anything like that at all in Amsterdam. Basically we just walked out of the plane and into the main terminal. We could've just walked right out of the airport and disappeared without anyone noticing. We kept backtracking as we moved through the airport looking for some sort of official who was willing to take a look at our passports.
Since we were there for three hours, we decided to go outside and look around a little. Just because neither of us had ever been in the Netherlands before. But we couldn't seem to find an exit. We found one, but it was closed for repairs. We must have walked around for an hour looking for a door, but we couldn't find anyway out of the terminal. Luckily Amsterdam wasn't our final destination or we would've been in trouble.
From Amsterdam we caught the early morning flight to Toulouse. We were flying on KLM, which is a Dutch airline, and all of the stewardesses spoke Dutch and English. They didn't translate anything into French, which I thought was odd since the plane was probably full of French people.
When we landed in Toulouse we again found pretty lax security procedures. There was no customs at all, no declarations or anything. We did find a guy who looked at our passports, but he didn't stamp them or anything.
We took the bus from the airport to downtown Toulouse and headed straight for the tourist bureau in the middle of the town. It is located in an old church or castle or something. At this point I said to Dave, "So, what hotel are we staying at?" You see, he was supposed to take care of the logistics while I was supposed to spend my time studying French. I did read through an entire basic French text, but I wasn't as useful as I'd thought I would be. Anyway, Dave said, "I figure we'll just ask around for a place." So much for our logistics planning...
The tourist bureau gave us a map and some names of hotels. It was starting to get hot and we were dragging around all of our luggage. It was probably the worst time we had for the entire trip. We went to about three hotels, all of whom were booked. Then we went back to the tourist bureau and they recommended the Kyraid Hotel, which was a few blocks outside of the city center, and just over the Canal du Midi, which is one of the rivers that runs through town. We dragged ourselves over there, and it wasn't as long a walk as we'd thought. We asked if they had any rooms for two nights, and they said that they only a had a room for one night. We took it, figuring that we could find a new hotel the next day.
As it turned out, it was probably the best hotel we stayed at the entire trip. It had air conditioning and it was pretty large. You always hear that the hotel rooms in Europe are very small, and mostly that was true, but this one was pretty big. One other interesting thing about the hotel was their check-in procedure. We asked for a room, the clerk said, "Here's the key, pay tomorrow before you leave." And bang! That was it. They didn't want a credit card or a name or nothing. Pretty trusting of them.
We were pretty tired, but excited to be in France, so we decided not to nap and instead get cleaned up and do some exploring. The showers in Europe are a little different than the ones in the US. Basically, they have a hand-held shower head, and there is usually no shower curtain. You are supposed to sit in the tub. Dave was unable to do this without getting a flood of water all over the bathroom, and wasn't happy that things were different. For my part, I enjoy little differences like that. I feel that there is nothing to complain about. I'm in a different country, so I expect things to be a little different. I don't think that those differences are bad, or that somehow it is inferior to the US way of doing things, it just takes a little getting used to. Dave insisted that the French showers were inferior.
After mopping up the bathroom, we wandered around downtown Toulouse for a while. We stopped at a brasserie (bar/café) and had some ice cream. For me, the most interesting part of being overseas is to just sit and watch people and to try to understand what life is like in that place. As exotic as southern France seems to me, it is 'home' for a lot of people, and it is interesting to imagine what life is like for those people. I suppose that France, being a large, industrialized country isn't so different as say the people living in Nauru or Bhutan, but it is still interesting.
Click here to see some pictures of downtown Toulouse.
We wandered over to a cathedral (aka a Basilique) called Saint Sernin. It was of interest because it is 'Romanesque', not 'Gothic'. It was built before they invented flying buttresses and a lot of the other features that are typical to what we think of as 'cathedrals'. It is a bit of a technological marvel that the builders were able to build something of that size without any of the architectural tricks that keep buildings from falling down.
Click here to see some pictures of the Basilique St. Sernin.
We walked around the shopping area for a while, and eventually ate dinner at a restaurant called, La Pere Leon. Of course, they didn't start serving dinner until 7pm, so we had to wait at the bar a while before they would serve us. It was ok though, wine was plentiful and cheap (as it is everywhere in France). We were pretty beat after dinner, so we headed back to the hotel. We stopped at an Irish pub along the way, but there were no English-speaking tourists there, so we didn't stay long.
The next day we both felt refreshed. I went down and asked the hotel clerk if we could stay another day and he said, "Sure, what do I care?" So we felt good in that we had a place to stay for the night again. We started out by walking through more of the town (we did a tremendous amount of walking) and by going to a Jacobian Cathedral. (We saw a very large number of churches during our trip). This one was interesting because they have the relics of St. Thomas Aquinias there, which was something I didn't know was in Toulouse (although I hadn't really given it much thought in the past).
Click here to see some pictures of the Jacobian Cathedral.
We meandered around the town for a while, not particularly looking at anything in particular. We went to another church, the Citadel of St. Etienne. We went to lunch at an Italian restaurant called, Pasta Mia. I was able to check my email at an internet café (I need my email). We also walked through the royal garden (Jardin Royale), which wasn't all that impressive. There were a lot of World War I memorials around, especially in Toulouse. We also took the subway for one stop, just to see what it was like.
For dinner that night we went to an organic restaurant called Salon Bio, which was one of the best meals we had during the entire trip.
After dinner, we went out looking to see if we could find some other tourists. It is fun to meet people from different places, and folks tend to be pretty friendly when they are on vacation. But we couldn't really find anybody. We did go to a bar called "The Frog and Roastbif", which is a chain (I've been to the one in Paris). Unlike every place else that we found, everybody in that bar is speaking English. I guess that it is a famous British expatriate hangout. We didn't really talk to anyone though.
The next morning, we left the Kyriad bright and early and took a taxi to the airport. At the airport we rented a car, and started our drive to Andorra.
On to the next section, Chris Goes to Andorra
If you are thinking of going to Peru instead of France, see my Peru Page.
If for some reason you think that I'm a great writer, and you like scary, conspiracy-laden, psychological thrillers, you can read my novel, City of Pillars, published by The Invisible College Press. It has nothing to do with France though. PS: I use my middle name as my nom de plume, but it's still me.