Okay, enough is enough. Promise. This is it from Toulouse, which brings us to the end of the Barcelona Trip.
Tomorrow (Saturday) we’re back on the road to Aix-en Provence. Sunday we got to Nice, where Keaka has a hockey game.
This afternoon we moved around the city with Sophia and Keaka. We took them to Place du Capitole and the nearby Wilson Square, which dates back to the 1830s. Therefore, I can’t explain Wilson Square as honoring Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson Square features a fountain and a merry-go-round, which you see in photos. We got aboard the 1 hour and 20 minute tour bus and saw much of the city. Toulouse is not Paris, nor is it Barcelona. But, we saw much, including an interesting old building behind an iron fence. The large statue is a war memorial where there is always a big celebration on Veterans Day. We got a shot of a typical Toulouse street scene, which in many ways features wide boulevards, much like Barcelona. Toulouse is nowhere near as clean as what we saw in Spain. As is typical in France, many buildings are in need of repair (at least some paint). And, it’s generally on the dirty side. Also, see the Basilique St. Sermin, which is one of the top tourist stops in Toulouse.
Marlene had been told that Toulouse was a great place. I found out upon our arrival that she thought Toulouse was a village. Thus, she was quite surprised upon our arrival to discover this is a big city. As tour director I simply go where the client wants to go, and in this case, it was on the return route from Spain.
(NOT FOR ALL EYES!) Just a note about France. This afternoon, right in the middle of the city and among many pedestrians and vehicles, a man decided to drop his zipper and urinate. Always nice to watch and see that urine curling its way down the sidewalk. Surprisingly, that’s relatively typical in France. Or, to be clearer, we’ve seen it many times. The site of a car pulled over to the side of a road and a man standing about 15 feet from the road out in the good old wide open spaces is continually surprising. I guess we should quit being surprised. We keep thinking these folks might look for a couple of trees and at least get on the other side of a tree. Well, it doesn’t happen that way. It’s cultural.......I guess. The topper came a couple of weeks ago on an auto route going through the north end of Marseille. Traffic was slow and a car had pulled over and a somewhat plump woman had gotten out and was squatting about 15 feet from the lane of cars and solving her immediate problem. There were less conspicuous sites nearby, but apparently she didn’t see it necessary to seek any shelter. Also, walking along many sidewalks can be dangerous. We see it all the time in France and did also see it in Spain. It seems that folks walking their dogs don’t regularly pickup after their dogs. And, believe me, they must have some big dogs. I got a shoe full the other day and wasn’t very happy. When you’re touring you tend to look straight ahead or up, but not down at the sidewalk. Here you need to keep one eye on the pavement. There certainly are cultural things that we’ll need more than eleven months to get use to.
We’re not too far away from the Rome Trip, which includes Naples and the Amalfi Coast. There is a bit of a breather.
The Wilsons
