February Travels: Toulouse, France

Stop number 3 on our French road trip was Toulouse, which turned out to be one of my favorite cities that I've visited in France! Here's the map once again so you can see the little trip we took from Toulon to Montpellier to Carcassonne and to Toulouse.

As you can see on the map, Toulouse is in the southwest

It is a huge college town with tons of restaurants and museums and just a lot of young people. The architecture is also my favorite. It is called la ville rose because a huge majority of the buildings are made of brick (a pinky-red color) and often have blue shutters. It makes for a really cool aesthetic. The only downside was that it was raining the entire time we were there. We arrived around 1 pm from Carcassonne and settled into the AirBnb, which was decent but missing toilet paper (a somewhat essential thing) and one of us had to sleep on a blow-up mattress which deflated throughout the evening. But it was right in the heart of the city and had TV so that was a plus.

Also here are some remaining pictures from Carcassonne:

Streets of Carcassonne

La Cité de Carcassonne 

Gardens in front of the castle

Helena and Emma having a ball on the top of a strange mound!

Flowers near the Aude

And here are some of the street pictures of Toulouse!

The first afternoon we walked around (in the rain) and checked out the stores that were around us. We bought a few odds and ends for friends and then wandered into the Capitol building in an attempt to find the Tourism Office. Inside the Capitol building there is a small museum with a few rooms of paintings. They were surprisingly beautiful, one room being an impressionist room and the other full of frescos, statues, and many other paintings. After that, we went to the Tourism Office to get a map and then moseyed to the bank and the post office, finally finding a cafe for a quick gourmand pause. After that, we walked to the Église Saint Sernin and walked through and then headed to the Couvent des Jacobins for a quick peek. We were freezing and it was dark, though, so we swung by the store for groceries, made dinner at the apartment, and watched music videos until we went to bed.

The Capitol

Pretty impressionist (?) painting inside

Beautiful!

Chocolat gourmand: Hot chocolate plus three mini desserts

Inside the church

Mother Theresa's prayer

Inside the convent at night

Cool street art on the way home!

The second day we started out by going to the Japanese gardens! Then, Helena and I took an audio tour of the Couvent des Jacobins (an old Dominican convent) and then met Emma at an English teahouse for a late lunch. I ate a "Meat Pie" which sounds mildly disgusting but was actually a really good pot pie filled with ground beef and lots of spices, and I also had a delicious hot chocolate. Afterwards, we trudged through the icy rain again to see the Abbatoirs, a modern art museum housed in an old slaughterhouse. After that, we went home because it was just too cold. However, our last escapade was to eat at a traditional Toulousian restuarant. We chose a place called La Gouille. It was a small little restuarant with really hearty food for only 13 euros. We had vegetable soup with homemade bread as a starter and then I chose the cassoulet (a white bean stew made with duck and sausage) and Emma had the camembert rôti (melted camembert with roasted potatoes and a piece of bacon. We were extremely full and happy afterwards. There was even a concert going on downstairs. The boys in the band told us to come down and watch but we were so full, we knew it was time to sleep.

The coolest and scariest jungle gym

this contraption is meant for children

How no one gets sued for this amazes me

Japanese gardens

The meeting room where they decided things democratically!

The cathedral

The refectory (their lunchroom!)

"Meat Pie"

Highly recommend this tea room! BAPZ

Crossing the New Bridge.

Inside the Abattoirs (modern art museum)

The rainy streets of Toulouse 

The brick with the blue!

Walking through the streets, that's Emma and me

Mildly awkward bridge pic

Veggie soup!

Cassoulet (white bean stew with duck confit and sausage)

Roasted camembert and potatoes and bacon that Emma ordered

The next day I took a Blablacar back to Toulon around 11, so I didn't really do anything. Got up, grabbed a sandwich and took the metro out to the last stop to get picked up. Had a weird run-in with the owner of a cafe there. I was waiting for my car share and I went to get a croissant and a coffee. I was drinking out of my water bottle when the owner said I wasn't allowed to drink "outside water". Needless to say, I and the only other people who were there (three ladies who had bought food in hopes of using the restroom that they weren't allowed to use or that wasn't working, it was unclear) left because the owner made us feel rather unwelcome.

About four hours later, I was back in Toulon for the evening (home sweet home!) before I flew out to Germany the next day. More to come about Germany and Prague which were amazing trips!

untitled melancholic post

Hello!

So, the title of this post is not super specific, but I really didn't know what to title it. I've just been reflecting a lot in the past two weeks about how close I am to the end of my time in France. It seems pretty insane how quickly this post-grad year passed. The same refrain everyone always says no matter what period of their life they are in. Time always passes faster every year you get older and this year was no real exception. It just has been hitting me lately because I just finished up my third of four vacations, which means that I am over halfway done. Now I have a little less than two months left and I am already feeling the double-edged sword of finishing a period of your life, an infuriating mix of melancholy of all I'm leaving behind and anxiety about all that there is to come.

Traveling with people, living abroad with other foreigners, and going through the same struggles with the same group of people brings you close to them a lot quicker than normal life brings you to those around you. I've already made so many friendships that I am going to be sad to leave behind and so many good memories in Toulon, with my teachers, and with my friends at church that it will be hard to go back to a place that I've known all my life. Moreover, the bad part about being American is that you live so far from all these other places. Our country is so big it's not very easy to leave it. I'll miss that about Europe and it will be infinitely harder to keep contact with all my European friends because of the time change and distance. The more I am in France, the more I want to be. I know when I return to California, I will feel the same about the U.S. You tend to feel torn between two places so far away from each other.

That's all I have to say right now on that subject. Good news, I am positive that this part of my life was where I was meant to be. I do not regret coming to France again. It has opened my eyes wider than they were before and for that I am grateful.

February Travels: Carcassonne, France

City #2: Carcassonne

Next we traveled to Carcassonne, which you can see on the map from the previous post. It isn't too far, about an hour I think, maybe two from Montpellier. Carcassonne is a special city because it is a fortified city. The main attraction is the huge medieval fortress and castle.

Looking on Wikipedia, I discovered that there was evidence of settlement as early as 3500 BC but during the audio tour they referenced the 3rd century A.D. as being the first actual castle remnants. It was a part of the Roman empire, but then was taken over by various other groups. In 1067, when France was still made up of many feudal families, it fell into the hands of the Trencavel family. They made many additions and expansions. In 1247, it came under the rule of France and was actually a fortress on the border between France and Spain (which was much higher up at that point). The fortress was known for centuries as being "impossible" to infiltrate and most of the tour we took explained the various fortifications that made that true. Finally, when the region of France called Roussillon was added France in 1659, Carcassonne was no longer a border city and thus became less important as a fortress. And, obviously, today it is an touristic city. However, seeing as we were there in February, the town itself was very calm and surrounded by a nice river, a canal and walking paths. I would recommend it if you were looking for a more relaxed, small spot. It would probably also be lovely in the summer. (And, I've heard they have fireworks by the castle on the 14th of July which is France's "4th of July", not a day of independence but the storming of the Bastille).

We arrived around 10 am in Carcassonne, checked into the air BnB, had a quick lunch, and set out for the castle. It was about a 15-20 minute walk from our AirBnb which was in downtown. We walked around the fortress, took an audio tour of the castle, walked one of the walls of the fortress, grabbed a late second-lunch at a café, took a walk along the Canal du Midi (a tree-lined canal that runs 241 kilometers from Toulouse, through Carcassonne and to the Mediterranean), and made dinner at the AirBNB. The next morning we took a jaunt through the gardens in front of the castle and then we were on our way to Toulouse.

Downtown Carcassonne

Crossing the Old Bridge to get to the Cité de Carcassonne

The smallest church before the bridge

Merci Seigneur

Stained glass, always a crowd pleaser!

The Old Bridge

River Aude

La Cité de Carcassonne on the approach!

Making our way around the castle

Mounting one of the sides of the hill

How many pictures have we taken?

We are in a medieval fortress!

Named after the River Aude

Entrance to the castle part

Inside the courtyard. 

A recreation of the fortress: It had 48 ramparts and two walls. 

Along the fortress

Overlooking one of the courtyards within the castle

Whadda view.

A hole down which they used to drop stones on their enemies!

Yet another view from the side

View of the houses with the church in the circle at the bottom

Emma!

Imagining this to be my kingdom.

An updated theater in there as well

Some cool towers in the background

The fortress' cathedral

RIP grey boots

Paintings in the streets around the Cité

Old town Carcassonne

A duck in its natural habitat.

The attack of the ducks

Canal du Midi

:D

Feeling sassy

The whole gang: Emma, me and Helena

I forgot to mention that the fortress of Carcassonne is called la Cité de Carcassonne. So, next we leave the medieval world and head for the university town of Toulouse. Bisous.