France Travel: More Toulouse

After our +43 Degree day and at least +36 degree night... we awoke to torrential rain in Toulouse this morning, so a leisurely start with coffee and fruit was a good beginning. Just as I was about to dismay, the local shops started to open. At 10am, how civilized! I could definitely live in Toulouse! Christopher was still wiping the sleep from his eyes and making himself beautiful when I headed out on the rainy streets with Isla. (Note from CJA - For the record, Isla and I got up first and walked through torrential rain to the underground parking 3 blocks away getting totally soaked.  Why do this?  Gentle Readers... of course to get an umbrella for our beloved!) We window shopped through the neighbourhood, enjoying the cooler weather.

Then, after leaving Isla at our flat, Chris and I headed to the Musee des Augustins which is reputed to have an amazing collection. The extreme heat and lack of air conditioning caused the museum to close the galleries full of paintings. The museums sculptures were deemed to be un-damageable by the extra heat of the human gaze, so we got to see that. Imagine a world class museum that doesn't have air conditioning! Even the museum in Haines Junction, Yukon (population 12;-) has air conditioning! There's really only so much antique marble and religious art one can gaze at in a given day, so we decided to try for lunch.

No thigh gap on these ladies...

A modern exhibit of some very old carvings...

Restoration going on in the chapel at the Musee.

Yes... you have guessed correct.  Christopher is adding the pictures!

Creepy... yes?  Gotta love the Catholic Church!

Is this one cool or what?!?

The interior courtyard of the musee...

These are downspouts for water...

This collection of sculptures really stood out for us both.

Gentle readers, I know I'm in France, and thus should dine on French food no matter what, but we are spoiled with ethnic variety in Canada.  There are just times when a body just needs a little spice in their food. We'd spied a Japanese restaurant the night before and we were trying to find that when I saw a vaguely asian sign. We headed for that and stumbled on a small Thai restaurant. Even then, we had to ask specially for real hot sauce. We then stumbled onto a tiny Tunisian spot when we got mint tea, lemon aid and sweets. After picking up Isla from the flat we found a spot where we got East Indian lassie's.

Patiently waiting to order?

Preparing our Thai inspired food...

Pouring herself some 'authentic' mint tea...

We also bought some more perfume based on yesterday's samples. And I found a book shop with a few English language books. We stopped for a cocktail in the lovely bar from yesterday and eventually managed to find our way out of the underground parking and through the tiny streets of downtown Toulouse to the motorway. The satellite navigator was very confused by Toulouse, so we just followed the traffic.