Toulouse and Banana Land

Here in the desert, it’s 114 F degrees outside (45.6 C). What a good time to write some more about Toulouse – I really did love that little city! We kept being surprised!

Wandering around the second day, we discovered the lovely and lively Wilson square, with trees, flowers, a carousel, and people of all ages enjoying being – just being.

A peddler had an array of pop cans he’d transformed into lots of ingenious things. When we stopped to admire them, he expected us to buy some, but our backpacks had no room for anything else. Mary tried to explain, with no success. I couldn’t think of any words to help her out, so an elegant-looking older man (our age, probably – I keep forgetting to put myself in that category) came to our rescue and told the man, nicely, we weren’t interested.

A handsome younger man let Mary take my picture with him. It was all quite jolly, this square named after an American president where everyone was in a holiday mood.

At lunchtime, we walked to the immense expanse of the boring and heavily populated Capitole square. Unimpressed, we turned down a narrow street off the square and found a perfect little restaurant called, yes, Banana Land. We were their first customers of the day. “Ici tout est prepare par nos soins,” said the waiter/owner/cashier and second cook. I think it meant that everything was prepared by themselves with care.

The menu was ho hum, but at a table in the darkened back sat a rough-looking man, actually one of the owners, eating something delicious-looking. “Could we have that?” I asked in French.

“Of course.” It was superb -- courgette (zucchini) stuffed with tomato and other things, salad, a fruit drink for me, and a chocolate coconut milkshake for Mary. The zucchini reminded us of a middle Eastern dish, so we foolishly asked if they were Armenian (I forget how we settled on Armenian; it must have been how they looked and how the food tasted, not that we knew much about either).

It took a lot of awkward explanations to get them to understand the question, and then they were adamant, even a bit offended. “French! We have always been French! Our family has always lived in Toulouse” (in French, of course). We wiggled our way out of that, so Mary got her picture taken with one of the owners.

After that, we bought berry tarts at Francois Xavier’s bakery and watched him make croissants.

So much good food meant we better go see something famous before eating again.

The Jacobins is famous for its exquisite ceiling, the oldest in Europe with unique “palm-tree” arches. That sounds like a tourist brochure. Look at the picture and you’ll be as impressed as we were. Now look at the other picture – there’s a huge mirror reflecting the ceiling! Wow! The whole place was super, not just for the ceiling.

I have to include the picture of Mary, pooped. We did eat well that day, and walk well, too.

It wasn’t over yet. The next stop was St Sernin, begun in the 11^th Century. I’m running out of superlatives! The distinctive tower is the highest point in Toulouse. Each wall and arch is painted exquisitely. Just look at that picture and imagine it all over the entire church! Who has that kind of vision and energy!?!

After such rhapsodizing, here’s the soft music that follows -- a quick impression from all over France. Pizza is sold everywhere, with an extremely thin crust. A single pizza overflows a large dish, and toppings are unique. Anything that’s in the kitchen can go on it. One person is expected to eat the whole thing, big as it is, but because there’s not so much bread, it’s easy to do.

Whew! Remember how I said we kept being surprised in Toulouse? I feel it again, writing about it. Go there if you can, but remember to decompress with a stroll along the Garonne river, or a fruit shake at Banana Land after you’ve been overwhelmed by the riches in the city.

Shoes in Toulouse

On a Friday in San Malo, five days into our trip, I noticed that about an inch of stitching on the little toe side of my right shoe had come out. The top part and the sole part were holding things together, but I worried about the future. It had taken a long time to find these perfect walking shoes, and so far I hadn’t seen anything in any French store that could match them for practicality. The French shoes easily outdid them for style -- not even a contest there, but I wouldn’t want to walk 10 miles a day in them.

However, I ignored the problem until Saturday afternoon when, urged on by Mary (sick and mostly sleeping, remember?) to get it fixed. Both of us were sure we’d seen a shoe repair place nearby, so I went searching. After an hour or so, I gave up and went back to the hotel. Oops. There it was, right across the street, just a tiny doorway and a sign on the door that said I’d missed him by 45 minutes. I was actually relieved.

My sense of adventure was dead in the water when it came to facing a “Cordonnier.” It takes me longer than it should to build up courage about certain unpredictable things. I never know when I will be brave and when I won’t. Why a shoemaker panicked me, I don’t know, but it did.

Mary was determined. She likes to have things right. She didn’t mention my shoe at our next stop, Tours, but that’s only because she was still a bit sick. By the time the train and metro delivered us to Toulouse and the Garden Hotel, she had recovered enough to be pushy. As soon as we got settled, she went to ask the concierge to find me a shoe repair place.

Returning to our room, she eagerly placed a map before me and told me what she thought the concierge had said. “We” were somewhere around “here” or maybe “there”, and the shoe place was close to “there” or maybe “here”.

I was trapped. Map in hand, I asked for clarification from the concierge, hoping it would be so far away that I couldn’t go until tomorrow. After all, it was getting toward evening already.

The concierge showed me where we were on the map, and then where the cordonnier was, very very close. She then walked me to the door, pointed down the street to the corner, said “A droit” (right) two blocks, where there would appear a huge shopping center with a shoe repair place at the address she wrote out for me. Yes, he would still be open! Go!

It seemed a lot easier when she said it, so off I went, courage high.

The cordonnier was almost too busy to notice me, but I called out, “Bonjour, Monsieur,” like you always do when entering a business or shop. Reluctantly, it seemed, he turned from his work to tell me he had no time.

“But it’s my only shoe,” I whined in French.

He gestured around his shop at the shelves full of shoes and said, “Vous n’etes pas la seule.”

I was not the only one. Then he went on to explain that he would have to take my shoe now, glue it, keep it overnight, then sew it tomorrow, and he simply did not have time to do it no matter what!

That wasn’t what I’d expected. Even if he could have taken it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to walk around in one shoe until it was ready sometime the next day, so I left feeling gloomy.

Next door was a Supermarket, a real one with food and an amazing variety of other goods. As I went in search of snacks and cheese, I suddenly recalled the cordonnier’s words about gluing my shoe. I hurried over to a section with tape and other adhesives, and found Super Glue!

Victorious, back I went to the Garden Hotel with the excellent snacks and the ever-useful super glue. When I showed it to the concierge, she smiled and said, “Tres bien,” agreeing that my problem with the shoe was solved.

Mary doubted, but I went to work and in minutes, my shoe was fixed. I held it tight for about 3 minutes, and ever after it held no matter how much walking I did. In fact, it still holds.

There are ways to do things when the obvious ones aren’t available.

Mary didn’t like my solution. It bothered her that my shoe was not stitiched properly, even if the glue held perfectly well. In fact, she continued looking for a cordonnier in the next several places we went. Perhaps my impatience with this finally got through to her because there came a day when she didn’t mention it any more.

We learned a lot about ourselves and each other on this trip. That was one of my purposes for going. After a certain age, I think many of us want to know what our lives have added up to, what we know, and how the shortened path ahead can be made the most fruitful for both ourselves and others.

My lessons through Mary were often painful. When troubled, I’ve always written down my feelings to help make sense of what I’m going through. I couldn’t do this with my daily trip journal because Mary used it to jog her memory while writing her own journal.

I resorted to writing the real personal thoughts on scraps of paper which were then poked into the secret compartments in my backpack. When I got back and pulled them out, some of them were ridiculous. Writing them had expunged the devil inside so that I no longer needed them. Into the trash they went. A few others, I kept. I’ll share them later.

As Mary and I came to understand each other, we each gave way, not a lot, but some. Later, when my purse strap broke, my solution [too complicated to explain] was ingenious but sloppy. Mary’s expensive super-thief-proof purse with the steel-core strap developed a rip, with the sharp end poking out in an annoying way..

And so we hobbled along, super-gluing our friendship closer through these little diversities and troubles.

Toulouse, Full of Surprises

It’s Saturday, August 13, and the Dalai Lama, is speaking in Toulouse today. Mary and I arrived in Toulouse on April 13. Doesn’t that make the three of us somewhat connected? Well, probably not, but it shows that lots of different people think Toulouse and the DL are both pretty wonderful.

I’ve mentioned before how our backpacks make us very wide. I seem to have no conception of how big the “add-on” is. Toulouse is three long train-rides from Tours, giving lots of opportunity for my backpack and me to innocently bludgeon our way through crowds. Just after boarding one train, I looked around to check where Mary went, and found her sprawled across some steps leading to the upper level of seats, with a frail little old lady telling her how sorry she was and trying to pull her up.

The fault was, of course, all mine. Mary’s glare made that clear. I felt huge and clumsy, so why couldn’t I stop laughing?

Toulouse, though far from the Atlantic, straddles the wide and deep Garonne river. There’s a lot of commercial shipping now, but during WW II, German U-boats came all the way up the river to reach the interior. That was odd to think about, seeing the city and the river so peaceful and welcoming. Waterways are historic invitations to invasion.

The Garden hotel in Toulouse was in a so-so district a metro ride from the center of town, but was the quietest so far and I slept really well. The staff was helpful and friendly, and the room spacious. The patio is filled with flowers and a huge bulbous overspreading pine tree.

After settling in, we left the hotel at 1810 (the unambiguous way they say “p.m.” here, so it was 6:10 p.m.), took the metro and stumbled upon the spectacular Museum of Augustins in an old monastery. It’s a big old brick building undergoing renovation (continually), so there were barriers up around most of the exterior to the point that we thought it was closed as we walked around it. Nope. On the far side was the entry. Not expecting much, we entered.

Down some steps, we turned a corner and I about shouted in astonishment. Probably I did shout. We were in a courtyard, a small version of the Cloisters in NYC, with an enormous flowering pink peony. Glorious! To the left, going down the entire corridor, were dog gargoyles saved from some church. It was the first time I’d been able to see them so close up! You appreciate the skill and humor of the stone cutters. Displays in other rooms also showed small sculptures rescued from fading archways in ancient churches. I’ve posted some of the pictures for you to enjoy.

We spent an hour and a half racing up stairs and down, through glass doors into more rooms and ever more incredible displays. It’s astonishing how much detail the stonecutters put into small sculptures that no-one would ever notice, they were so far from the range of human sight.

Not only was there a lot of humor, but also expressive emotions. By being confined to a tiny space, the sculptors excelled perhaps because they had to be more creative and innovative.

Mary was especially taken by the larger statues (2 ft high at most) of saints that had been in the curve of an arch. Their necks and heads leaned to one side as if they were desperate need of chiropractic help.

In one long corridor was an exhibit of excellent calligraphy carved in stone in the 13^th Century. It was too dark to get a good picture. I should have tried, just like I should have photographed the poignant statue of the Swiss coming to the help of suffering France, and the painting of a mother lifting her baby up to be kissed by the imprisoned father who looks out of a small barred window.

There were sculpted heads of four fine men lined up fairly close together, so we had a beauty contest. The fierce-looking younger one with massive curls and huge romantic eyes lost out to a kinder, gentler older man. It might have been a different outcome if we’d seen them on our first trip, 50 years ago.

We went upstairs and were gobsmacked (love that Brit term) to find three huge rooms of eye-level to ceiling paintings, mostly from painters in and around Toulouse, or ones dealing with the history of the region.

Look at the handsome, serious young man. He’s a baron! Being noble, he didn’t have to take up painting, but he did – and he painted this self portrait! And the picture of the man with the modern semi-mohawk (I forget the exact term the kids use nowadays). Plus ca change – with men’s hair, from long curls to short Mohawks.

There was another of Christ at the wedding in Cana, with everyone in (then) modern dress. I wondered how that would go over now, if Christ was in a tuxedo. I’d love to see a good painter give it a try. Or maybe, in keeping with our times, a good photographer.

We finally left, reluctantly, a bit after eight o’clock, and were sent a couple of blocks away to Place St. Georges for dinner. The whole plaza was filled with outdoor eating, and tres cher (very expensive). After looking at some of the menus, we strolled down a side street to a small, deserted café which turned out to be a superb choice.

Our waiter was energetic, young, serious, and fast. He rushed back and forth between the kitchen and the tables, quite a distance (we had been joined by other diners following our lead). He was also short, compact, and cute, dressed in jeans and tennis shoes, but expert at his job. We were surprised to discover that this was only his second night there! We complimented him, of course, which pleased him so much he had the chef fix a special salad of just veggies for Mary. My own hot goat cheese salad (chevre chaud) was celestial.

After dinner, we saw that the plaza was still packed with diners at 10:00. I was exhausted. We took the metro back to the hotel and fell straight into bed, sleeping through till 7:00, a record for me.

Amboise!

Note: Blogger decides where to put pictures, and how many, so I had to leave out some favorites and you will have to guess where in the story the ones that are here, fit.

What a delight! Have you seen the movie "Ever After"? It’s a revise of the Cinderella story with Drew Barrymore, and takes place at Amboise. The producers had to substitute another chateau that looks almost like it, but the main royals of the movie, King Francis I and Prince Henry II lived at Amboise. The similarities between the movie chateau and the real one is striking.

One of the funniest scenes has the great artist/inventor Leonardo da Vinci using his huge wooden shoes to “walk on water”. In so doing, presumably on the Loire, he surprises Drew Barrymore who is floating on her back in the river. Both are topsy-turvied by the encounter! See the movie – it’s pretty good.

To get to Amboise, we took a long and wide regional bus that had to navigate tiny streets and small-diameter roundabouts. The woman driver was excellent, keeping her sense of humor throughout. She let us off in the town, pointing out where to catch the bus back to Tours.

No signs directed us, but a glance to the west (I presume) left no doubt. On a high cliff, soaring above tall rock walls was a fairytale castle, oops chateau. There’s a difference. Chateaux are residences for royals, but so are castles. Castles are fortified, but so are some chateaux. The translation (per google) for chateau is “mansion,” but also “castle.” OK, chateaux are prettier, and Amboise is one of the prettiest.

Strolling down a narrow street (in every town/city, any older street is narrow), we came upon a patisserie, our favorite kind of store.

I was on a mission to test lemon tarts in every place we stopped. The Amboise tart, complete with a luscious creamy meringue on top, tied with or maybe even surpassed the Paris tarts in my unofficial competition. Mary’s choice had been a gorgeous chocolatey mound of meringue and cream which wasn’t nearly as tasty as my lemon. We ate our snacks on a bench at the foot of the chateau, gaining energy for the steep climb up the hill.

Look at the gorgeous wisteria flowing over the wall by the souvenir shop! Mary went inside while I stayed out watching the schoolchildren and other tourists, almost all French. None American.

Up a ramp from there, you come to part of the open spaces. I’m at a loss for words! It was a perfect day, as you can see. Everywhere were stunning views which I am sharing with you.

I mentioned da Vinci before. He actually did live in a nearby cottage, being a favorite of Francis I, and is buried in the Chapelle Saint Hubert (see photos).

Mary decided that a chateau is a castle, with fortifications, so there must have been soldiers’ barracks somewhere about. We didn’t see any, so she asked around without getting the answer she wanted. Finally, as we were leaving, she went into the souvenir shop and asked the knowledgeable bookselling lady there about the soldiers.

The gist of the answer was that no soldiers lived in the chateau. It was a residence, not a castle.

Mary still knew there had to be soldiers because the long ramp from the town was there to allow soldiers to ride or march in.

The soldiers would have lived in the town, explained the lady. Servants lived in the chateau, and some bodyguards, but no armies.

I’m still not sure Mary ever agreed, but certainly early on, say 1200s, long before Francis I and Henry II in the 1500s, there were battles nearby, and archers inside the “castle” defended it.

The French Revolution did the most damage to Amboise, destroying many of the buildings and artwork here, and also in cathedrals and important sites all over France. Though restoration was begun in the 1800s, these attempts were wiped out by the German army in the 1940s. Now Amboise is owned by the Comte de Paris and maintained by him and a foundation. Thank goodness! It’s a treasure for the whole world to enjoy.

Dumbfounded in Tours

You’re forgiven if you thought this blog was going to be about tours we took. It’s actually about Tours, France. Even the computer got it wrong! I tried several times on Hostels.com to book a room in Tours, but every time, I got “Tours of France” instead of Tours, France. Finally, I went to another site, Bookings.com, and got a great room at the Mirabeau -- in Tours.

Be careful what you name your towns! Like Worms in Germany. I know it doesn’t mean the same in German as English, but still . . .

I skipped Tours on the blog so we could hurry to Albi and the Mediterranean, but now I’ll take you back to Tours, Amboise, and Toulouse, all great stops. These were in April, right after St. Malo on the English Channel, if you remember back that far.

It was a long train ride from St. Malo, but I almost made it shorter by getting off at the wrong station! It was kind of obvious that the little town wasn’t the major city of the Loire Valley. Luckily, Mary asked someone and sure enough we had to run (as in run) up stairs with our backpacks to re-board the train before it left for the next stop, the right one.

It must have been my day for messing up because when I went into what looked like a tourist office and showed the lady inside, the address of the Mirabeau on Blvd Heurteloup, she had no clue but pointed us down a pedestrian walkway to where the major bus lines were. A few blocks later, hot and tired, we reached Rue Charles Gille and, sure enough, buses. The google map I’d printed out seemed to say the hotel was near the river, so we decided to walk since on google it didn’t look that far.

Reached the river and didn’t know which way, left or right. Asked again. Directed to the right. Started walking. April 2011 was a record for heat. Most days that was great, but not when carrying the backpacks and not knowing where we were going. Walked and walked. Decided to catch a bus. Found a stop and got on, hoping it would get us somewhere closer to the hotel. At least we got to sit down. To shorten this story, after over an hour of much walking and much getting lost, we found the Mirabeau. It’s in plain sight on a major road with a pedestrian tree-shaded walkway down the middle.

The lady in charge was puzzled when we asked if we could possibly get a taxi back to the train station on Wednesday morning, two days away.

“But it’s only three or four blocks away,” she said, showing us her location on the map, and the train station.

We were dumbfounded! We’d walked and bused all around town to get there, and we could have easily covered the distance in ten minutes! Not only that, but the tourist lady’s office had been practically right on Blvd Heurteloup and she didn’t know it!

The Mirabeau was superb! Our room faced the street, with a balcony. Two double beds, bath with a shower, sink, and toilet. We hadn’t minded sharing a bed, or the trips down the hall to the WC in the other places, but this was blissful luxury for us.

Mary was miffed that there was no soap, even though we each had brought our own. “It’s a little thing; drop it,” I said, but she went to complain.

In doing so, she had a nice chat with the lady in charge, who showed her the beautiful breakfast room and talked about the history of the place, how the entry used to be the place where horse carriages entered the courtyard. Now it's the patio off the breakfast room, and the stables are in the next property over

Mary brought back soap, and we signed up for the bounteous, leisurely Petit Dejeuner (breakfast).

This was April 11, an auspicious day because in Vancouver, BC, my newest granddaughter was slated to be delivered by Caesarean to daughter Alisa. Here I was, nine hours ahead of them and half a world away, trying to get in touch with anyone who could tell me what was going on. I called daughter Celia three times and husband Thrim once, with no answers, then finally found daughter Mieke in New Jersey who said Alisa wasn’t going in until 1:00 p.m. Vancouver time. I would have to be patient.

Sahana was born healthily and happily, and Mom, Dad and baby and sister were doing just fine. What a relief! Also Indian grandmother Lakshmil who had come all that way to help out for two months!

In Tours, Mary still hadn’t completely recovered from the mystery malady that hit her in St. Malo. However, we were desperately hungry, so we trekked into the old town, which was very close to us, past a marvelous cathedral, St. Bastien. The high old walls bordering the street – see the photos.

All through this area were narrow winding streets and architecture with wood and wattle or brick patterns like you see in old England. We ate on Rue de la Monnaie (Money Street). It was a darkish place that wanted more “monnaie” than it was worth, but the green beans were tasty. Usually there weren’t a lot of vegetables with the meals unless you ordered a salad. I missed veggies.

Tours is in a great location for chateau-viewing, and one of the best and closest is the Chateau d’Amboise. The next day we took a regional bus there, getting tickets at the same place where the woman steered us astray.

Since Mary needed rest, she took a nap at the hotel for the 90 minutes before the bus left, and I went exploring. The old town is full of schools from preschool to high school and even college. I hurried to the cathedral, got some pix, then wandered around and ended in the Jardin Mirabeau to the sounds of joyful children at recess. Happy, obedient children, who are noisy at play, but so quiet at other times you hardly know they are there at all.

Tours is well worth a stop, should you be in the Loire Valley chateau country. Just don’t ask directions at the place that looks like a tourist office outside the train station but is actually the regional bus ticket place. They don’t know Tours. The real Office du Tourisme is half a block north on the other side of Rue Heurteloup.