Back in Paris...

Where the weather is clear and warm and it stays light until 10 p.m.

Cathy and I left Durfort Wednesday morning, in time to drive into Toulouse before traffic got totally impossible. We made one or two extra circuits of "Centre Ville" before figuring out how to get the car back to the rental car lot at Gare Toulouse Matabiau, but once we squeezed into the correct lane, everything went well.

Toulouse, called the "rose city" because soft red brick is the building material of choice, is a lively, crowded, multi-racial city that is definitely southern, and definitely more laid-back than Paris. After settling into a formerly grand hotel that we picked for its convenient location - across from the train station - we set off for the main square, where sidewalk cafes and a busy market compete for space. To me the city felt like Southern California, in its heat, its plant material, and the mix of people. We particularly liked the market booths where women in long bright cotton print dresses and matching head wraps sold a kaleidoscopic variety of printed African fabrics.


With only part of a day to explore, we stayed close to the center, but did see the inside of the town hall (impressive 19th-century public building) and visit St. Sernin, a huge, austere Romanesque cathedral that incorporates bits and pieces of numerous earlier churches built on the same site.

After visiting the church, we enjoyed a "citron presse" (fabulous fresh lemonade) at a nearby cafe, where large trees in full leaf gave welcome shade. Later that evening we experienced true Toulousain weather, when a strong wind sprang up, followed by rain showers. By the time we finished dinner, the wind had died down and we dodged only a few sprinkles as we walked back to the hotel.

Next morning we took the train to Bordeaux, a much larger - and more self-consciously elegant city than Toulouse. Bordeaux, where all that lovely wine comes from, has been a port city since Roman times, and has impressive stone buildings dating back many centuries. It's a UNESCO World Heritage city, now busily reinventing its old downtown core into a pedestrian-friendly area that draws big crowds. The taxi driver had to insert a special card into a machine in order to drive us to the front door of our hotel, which was located just inside one of the old city gates. We were there on the Ascension Day holiday, "en vacances" along with hundreds of other people. Again we had only a brief time to explore, and there is much more to the city than we saw. (And all these photos are borrowed from the web, because I somehow never got out the camera.)

Thanks to some friends of Cathy, natives of Bordeaux, we were recommended to a wonderful restaurant for dinner. Although the menu was full of tempting items, we both zeroed in on "risotto avec coquilles St. Jacques" - a creamy risotto topped with five sauteed scallops. Special dessert of the evening was an assemblage of four flavors of Creme Brulee - lavender, rose, violet and "orchidee."

This week Cathy is off to a week's retreat at Thich Nhat Hahn's Village des Pruniers, probably a better way to decompress from a lively week in the Southwest than coming back to Paris. But I'm enjoying being back in the apartment - and definitely looking forward to coming home next week.