Hi all! sorry for the lack of posts but our home in Giroussens has a broken phone line and thus no Internet for us – Yikes! We have been going to the airport and some hotel lounges so we can use WIFI.
We’ll try and keep you updated as we do have some photos to share!
Until later.
It was on and off rain today as we took a drive over to the open market in Lavaur to pick up our roast chicken and fries for lunch. I think I’ll miss this when I go home to Canada. Superstore chicken just isn’t the same.
After a filling lunch, Diane and I drove over to the downtown of Giroussens to take a look at the Maison de la Ceramique here. Very cool stuff on exhibit, I may have to go back for another look one day.
Once we got home, Francois was itching to go exploring again. So the kids, Francois and I went for a drive to the nearby town of Lisle sur Tarn. Charming old town with a nice plaza in the centre of it. It is the only fortified town on the Tarn River’s plain to possess a port.
We stopped and walked around with the kids and stumbled across a chocolate gallery/museum. Since the kids were really gung-ho to go in–and me too–we decided to check it out. It was smaller than the Cluizel museum in Damville but had some great works of chocolate art. It had one other work of art that I had not yet encountered here in France – a very snooty French person. The lady/wife of the chocolatier ran the museum and boutique and was obviously not very fond of children….hello!! Chocolate and kids go together like white on rice! Long story short, we went through the tour and the boutique while she kept a stern eye on Emma and Liam and pursing her lips everytime they got excited. She kept telling them not to touch the items for sale in the boutique. Isn’t that the point of a boutique? She even told Emma not to put her fingers on the display glass of her bonbons.
Ah well, I had a good chuckle over that madame, especially since she glanced over my attire with a clear look of repugnance. I guess I was not haute couture enough for her. We didn’t let her spoil our day though as we bought just a few items to share on the way home – see ya later choco lady!
Tomorrow we head out for Perpignan for some sun and beach time and Diane goes to Paris on Monday.
Blog you later.
Today we went off to Toulouse to our favourite little mall to get some haircuts for Liam and Francois, have some ice cream and then do some grocery shopping. The weather was changing for the better today. The sun managed to come out in the afternoon although it was a little muggy from all the past rain we’ve had here.
We are planning out as many trips as we can in the next while before we have to leave. Only 41 days left to go and lots to see. I know we can’t see everything but that just means we’ll have to come back.
Sorry no pictures of the haircuts but I’m sure I’ll snap some soon.
Today we decided to take the TGV train from Toulouse over to Bordeaux, the land of great wine. The two hour train ride was really great and quite affordable too (61 euros for all 5 of us). We might decide to do another train trip in the near future….perhaps Paris again? We’ll see.
Once we arrived in Bordeaux we checked into our Etap hotel, located conveniently across the street from the train station, and then we started to walk around the city. Tonnes of construction and rennovation going on here everywhere you look and tonnes of dog doo doo too. I’m sure the city will be quite stunning when all the construction is finished.
Hopefully we’ll see a little more tomorrow before our two hour train trip back to Toulouse.
More blogging tomorrow!
Today we decided to check out the local market in Lavaur. It was massive and was held down the center of their downtown strip. Similar to the market in Paris, it had tonnes of clothing, books, housewares, toys and of course lots of food.
I love the way they display some of their prepared foods in these markets, it all looks so delicious. I also hate it for that reason because it makes me so hungry! All these markets seem to have similar stands, one in particular that I like is the roast chicken stand. They have a rack of these whole chickens slow roasting and at the bottom of the rack there is a tray to catch the drippings. In this tray they have chopped up potatoes cooking in all the drippings. What a fabulous idea!
We immediately bought and brought home a roast chicken with potatoes and a rasberry torte and inhaled.
Sad part of today is that Liam seems to have developed a cold. Hopefully it does not progress into anything more than that.
The weather was quite stunning for the past couple of days so we took it fairly easy and stayed put a the Rigou. Francois is still recovering from the long drive and his crazy allergies. The kids and I spent some time in the pool while Friday evening, Liam had a great video conference with his class. It was a real treat! Mme Lea, his teacher, had all the students prepare a couple of questions each in french to ask Liam. Then they sang some french songs for him, they all seemed really excited to talk to Liam through the computer. Liam was thrilled to talk to all his buddies.
Now we are planning for our next trip…not sure where yet.
Today Francois and I took the #69 bus to the Louvre while John and Anne ran some errands. We walked through the back of the Louvre courtyard and then towards the pyramid where everyone has to enter so they can check your bags etc. The line moved fairly quickly which was good becausee today was fairly grey, cool and windy.
When we entered the pyramid we proceeded downstairs to buy our 8Euro tickets (cheap!) get a Starbucks and then try and see as much as we could. We meandered through parts of the Richelieu, Sully and Denon sections of the Louvre. We saw most of the highlights of course, the Mona Lisa (it was fairly crowded to get a close look), the Venus de Milo (again crowded), works of Michelangelo, de Vinci, Vermeer and a bunch of others that I’ll never remember their names. It was great but very overwhelming. Someday we’ll go back and I have to also see the Musée d’Orsay, I heard its really good too.
After the Louvre our brains were fried so we went down the street to the Hotel Meurice, headquarters for the Nazis during the Paris occupation in WW II. Very impressive on the outside and very fancy on the inside. We proceeded next to a bookstore that claims to be the first English bookstore on the continent – Galignani – very cool store!
John and Anne met up with us at the bookstore and we walked next door to Angelina’s for some fabulous hot chocolate, quite easily the best I’ve ever tasted. I’ll come back here for sure!
We all then walked back towards our hotel, seeing some of the different streets along the way, it was a great tour. We picked up some dinner from a very fancy grocery store (I managed to take a few pictures before I was shut down by the staff) and ate at home.
Tomorrow, off to Normandy!
Today was not an exciting day. Francois and I had to catch up on lots of work before we head off to Paris on Wednesday. The kids did some homework in the morning and played with Diane in the afternoon inside and outside. It was another sunny and warm day.
Just after supper the kids and I went for a quick dip in the pool before the storm came. A great downpour of rain and hail with thunder and lightning. What a nice show! Not many pictures but Emma was quite photogenic today.
Today was another beautiful, sunny day around 23°C. We spent the morning at home and in the afternoon went up to our town of Giroussens. There was a large pottery exposition along the downtown strip where people from all over Europe came to sell their pottery. It was fantastic. I didn’t even know you could make things out of clay so beautifully. Francois admitted that he doesn’t care much for pottery but looking at the display here sparked a bigger interest. Perhaps he’ll even take up the craft…well not today.
We bought a couple of nice handmade pieces on the lower end of the price range and hopefully we don’t break them coming home. I can’t wait to use them! They had a great outdoor pottery workshop for the kids to do as well. Both Liam and Emma liked working with the clay and each took home the tiny treasure they made.
After the fair, we returned home for a quick dip in the pool while Diane and her sister Monique cooked up a beautiful duck dinner for us. Merci beaucoup!
We went to Toulouse in the afternoon for a lovely tour with Diane’s sister Monique. She showed us some nice streets with shopping and took us to a fabulous bookstore (it was massive inside). I loaded up on lots of French children’s books while Francois picked up a couple of history books written in French. I’m sure I’ll get more before I go back home.
We then went to a park along the Canal du Midi. It was very nice and funnily enough, we met another english speaking family there. They were from Pennsylvania and they are staying in Toulouse with their 4 kids for 3 months! Imagine that, running into another family doing the same thing. However, they actually bought a house and have been coming here for several years now. The mother homeschools the children while the husband works out of the home, he owns an office furniture business back in the US.
After our work we returned to Monique’s house where we dropped everyone off while Francois and I headed off to a movie! Yippee. We saw “Goodbye Bafana“, it was in french but it was still very good from what I could understand. Will have to watch it in English at home. We then picked up the kids and went home – thanks for babysitting Diane et Monique – Diane stayed overnight at her sister’s home.
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