Toulouse
Laura and Kathryn had only two more days to spend with us in Toulouse. Then there was a nine-day gap before our next and last guests of the season, Lisette’s sister Gillian and one of her granddaughters, Elora, were to arrive. They would stay with us for the rest of our cruising, through the period where we winterise Catharina Elisabeth and then spend a week with us in Paris before we all leave France. Our original plan was to leave Toulouse and cruise to Moissac to meet Gill, but we decided that there was plenty to see and do in Toulouse, so we would spend two weeks here – a record cruising stop for us. So, in no particular order – highlights of our visit.
The port, Saint Sauveur, was excellent. Well-managed by two capitains, one of whom had great English, the port was secure and well-provisioned.
One of the boats had just been sold with new owners yet to take possession. They were having a big clean-out, and the dumpster at the port suddenly became a resource for the locals. For my part, my dumpster diving yielded an almost complete set of our barge association’s Blue Flag magazines going back to the very first issue in May of 1992.
The port was not terribly busy, but there was a small community of fellow cruisers who came, stayed and went. Stuart and Deb on Mizu, Ian and Gordon (easy to remember – one of my brother’s names and mine) on the yacht Windsong; Cecilia from Majorca on her converted hire boat; Rob, whose Piper barge Merlot was moored nearby in an unserviced section and Rudi, a German who mostly kept to himself but was willing to talk and socialise. At Stuart’s behest, he and I agreed to engage in a duck cookoff/BBQ in the port one evening, and the whole group gathered to enjoy the socialising – fond memories of similar gatherings at Simon Evan’s yard in years gone by.
We also took a trip into the city in dreadful weather to eat at a very popular restaurant, L’Entrecôte, where queues form all along the street to get a table (no bookings), so we arrived before the evening session to secure an early seating.
The meals are very simple, but cheap and tasty. No menu. There is a very basic green salad with walnuts to start. This was followed promptly by the main course – a meat dish in a tasty sauce with frites – just that, nothing else.
The plate arrived with just a few slices of the meat with frites, and there was some concern that this was an unacceptably small serving, but soon after, a platter with the rest of the meat arrived.
There was plenty to eat, with the wait staff walking past on a regular basis, scooping heaps of extra frites onto our plates until we begged them to stop! Dessert was a choice of two ‘supermarket-style’ items.
Cost was around 20 Euros. Not a culinary highlight but a memorable experience, one that we later repeated when Gillian and Elora arrived.
The group also took the opportunity to have a drink in one of the hotels in the central square of Toulouse. A very opulent location and the service was excellent – the barman said the bottle of wine from which we had ordered our glasses was half-empty and would be discarded if we didn’t finish it, so he placed it on our table and wandered off.
Cecilia, our resident fount of information, had told us there was a place nearby where the lunch was not expensive. We tried it out one day and to our delight, found the €15.50, 3-course meal was wonderful.
With only a small number of tables, in a garden around a small koi pond, it was a lovely outdoor setting.
As soon as we were seated, we noticed Rudi, from the cruiser behind us in the port, and invited him to join us. The main purpose of the restaurant, Ô Jardin du XV, is to train women who are in difficult circumstances in cooking and serving so that they can find work. The meal was simple, but delicious.
We will certainly eat there again when we return to Toulouse.
We soon became familiar with the surroundings of the port. A modest-sized supermarket, a stone’s throw away. Also very close was a superb boulangerie/pâtisserie to provide us with basic and luxury baked goods. Close by was the Jardin du Grand Rond. A public park of over 3 hectares, which began to be developed in the 18th century, is generally circular (as per ‘Rond‘), with footbridge links to two other parks (Jardin Royal and Jardin des Plantes) adjacent to it.
A spectacular fountain at the centre
and the nearby rotunda were embellished with a number of cycling-related sculptures because Toulouse had been the 11th stage of the Tour de France this year.
Churches
Of course, as large city, Toulouse has several impressive ecclesiastical buildings.
Église Saint-Aubin was just a short walk along the canal. Considered a failure, the building of the church began in 1853 and, due to a lack of money, was never fully completed. Unusually for large churches in France, it is made of bricks rather than stone, but it is impressively large inside.
On one of our visits, we were treated to an impromptu concert featuring a chap playing a recorder and also panpipes – delightful with the added benefit of the acoustics of the large interior of the church.
The attentive amongst you will notice the statue of Joan of Arc just above the instrumentalist, but in more detail:
Otherwise, there was not much of note inside. However, every Sunday, the main weekly market in Toulouse is held around the church. There is a vast number and variety of stalls to walk through, and outside the entrance of the church, groups of performers congregate. People sitting on the steps leading up to the church is a popular way to watch the performances.
More impressive is the Basilica of Saint-Sernin – a UNESCO heritage-listed building.
Sernin (often Saturnin) was an early missionary sent to southern France in the third century. Basing himself in Toulouse as the first bishop of the parish, he began to convert the pagan inhabitants to Christianity. Saint-Sernin was martyred around 254 AD when, after refusing to participate in pagan rituals, he was punished by being tied to a wild bull and dragged through the streets of Toulouse until he was lifeless.
The interior is opulent, although we were not able to get close to the central nave because on both of the occasions we visited, weddings were in progress, and areas were cordoned off with photography strictly forbidden and aggressively enforced.
Equally aggressive was the forced removal of any woman who entered with bare arms. It did not have to be strappy summer tops. (On both of our visits, our guests were smartly told to cover up or leave.) Sleeveless t-shirts earned their wearers the same banishment. Lisette noticed that on the two occasions we went in, the brides wore a small cape to cover their shoulders, and it was only after we saw the second wedding in progress that she realised the capes were not part of the dress but a piece draped on for modesty within the walls. One assumes they were whipped off as soon as the bridal party left the hallowed interior.
The most impressive church was the Cathedral of Saint-Etienne. The nave was ornate
and there were equally ornate chapels around the cathedral.
Lisette was delighted to find a huge array of relics all along one of the side naves. Toulouse is on the famous pilgrimage route of *** and boasts a large number of relics of saints. Each bust stands on a pedestal, often with a small window displaying a tiny piece of bone, ostensibly from the deceased saint.
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We were thrilled to chance across some Riquet memorabilia,
Here he rests,
Not far away, Jeanne stands honouring those who died in the recent wars.
The Chapel des Carmélites was nearby and, though small, featured a stunning painted vault.
With Kathryn and Laura, we passed through the park several times, met some Aussie characters,
and on one occasion wending our way to the river to view the old lock that used to take vessels from the River Garonne into the city, and look at how the magnificent bridge, Pont Neuf, spanning the river
was constructed between 1554 and 1644, and how it has been able to survive many floods since then.
Also, while I made several trips to the hardware store, it took me past a nice statue of Jeanne d’Arc in her own street – can’t miss out on that secular location for her, rather than just churches.
Waiting for our next set of visitors, we did our own exploring, and Lisette read about Halle de la Machine. It was a simple enough bike ride of about 15 minutes, and we set off, hoping to avoid the rather large thunderstorm that was predicted to arrive later in the afternoon.
The place was amazing! Massive and minute machines, operated by people inside the gargantuan bodies and intricate consoles put on a show that left us breathless. Inside a massive warehouse were fantastic examples of the machines, which we understand are sometimes taken from the site to give performances around Toulouse, and other parts of France. Every working piece was intricate and super impressive. Several performances were musical, with complicated gears, pulleys, levers and so forth operating drums, whistles, guitars and other instruments.
One performance was a fight between an enormous dragon and a much smaller flying machine. The dragon belched steam and spat water over the crowd as it moved slowly forward.
The flying machine operator fitted herself neatly beneath the body and wings, and two other staff worked to raise and lower the creature for its fight with the dragon.
We decided we simply had to take advantage of a ride on the giant Minotaur. Standing 14 metres high,
one accesses it by climbing a staircase, and we found ourselves on a landing way up behind the head.
It required several staff to operate it, and with limbs moving and nostrils snorting steam,
we set off on a 30-minute ride metres above the ‘ants’ on the ground.
We passed the most unusual carousel we had ever seen, with bizarre creatures as the rides.
Spotting a supermarket as we ‘rode’ along,
we decided to check it out after we were back on the ground, and to our delight, it carried cans of confit duck. We filled the panniers with as many cans as we could carry and tore off back to the boat, beating the storm by a very small margin.
With Gill and Elora, the day they arrived (they had flown directly from the airport – Paris to Toulouse and then took a taxi to the port. (They were heavily ripped off – and the driver knew he had done the wrong thing when Lisette questioned him in perfectly good French! However, he shrugged and fled with their money.) But as they were driven to the port, Elora had spotted an antique fair just the other side of the park. So we all went off fairly quickly to explore. Boasting 100 stalls, we had a great time wandering along the path between them, and Gill and Elora found several items to pop into their suitcases. (Our guests – well, family really – are going to have to learn to save a little space in their cases before they arrive in France!)
After a few quick visits to sights around Toulouse, including a visit to the Basilica of Saint-Sernin and Gillian being expelled from it because she had exposed shoulders, and another visit to L’Entrecôte,
it was time to get on our way to our winter port at Moissac.
One other significant item was that we met with Serge, a well-known and recommended welder and general maintenance guy who works in the area and showed him our damaged railings. He gave us a good price, and we made an arrangement to have the work done next year on the 28-29 May, just before he left on his one-month vacation. We would arrive at Moissac, de-winterise, then cruise back up to Toulouse for him to do the work.
