Three Months in France March 31 – June 28, 2007

Photos from today

Today we got up around 10ish and some of us around noon. Since Francois was able to get comfortable with driving our manual transmission vehicle, we decided to take a drive to the nearby town of Lavaur. What a great place! It had lots of interesting architecture and really cute shops. We managed to find a cycle shop for Francois’ broken seat and a playground for the kids to spend some energy. Liam was even courageous enough to ask another child if he could borrow his toy (in french of course). Bravo Liam!

We stumbled across an amazing roman catholic church with massive doors that dates back to the 13th Century (pretty young for Europe I guess). The insides were going through some renovations but much of what was there looked like the original material. It had impressive stain glass windows and a towering pipe organ in the back. It had a dinstinct smell of someone’s musty cement basement.

Outside it was warm and Spring-like with many tulips and other flowers already in bloom and I can tell when the trees sprout leaves in Lavaur, it will be stunning just like a postcard. After some time in the town and our first fillup of Diesel or “gazole” as they call it here we went to the grocery store nearby. Wine and liquor in a grocery store – fantastic! They had so many different bottles of wine which cost less than a bottle of water here. Francois couldn’t resist and bought a .75 EURO bottle to see what it tasted like. We are not wine experts but that was pretty good! I’d buy it again for .75 EURO.

Tomorrow we’ll be going back to pick up Francois’ bike seat from the shop and hopefully take some more photos along the way. We saw some other neighbouring towns that looked like they had some old churches too, I hope we’ll be able to explore them as well. I also hope to have my first manual driving lesson tomorrow if the weather co-operates.

More tomorrow…