In love with Toulouse!
Our first stop was to the town of Narbonne. It is about two hours away from Barcelona, so we stopped their for lunch on our way to Toulouse. Our program is a big fan of doing these quick day trips to random towns, which in a way is nice, we do get to see more of the country that way but they seem to pick the towns based on convenience not how interesting they are. Don't get me wrong, Narbonne was a very nice little town, but we did not need to spend three hours wondering around.
After lunch we drove another two hours to get to Toulouse which is where we stayed for the next two nights. Toulouse is the fourth largest city in France and is one of the largest college towns as well. We got a lot of free time in Toulouse which was a very nice change from our other program excursions, so we actually got to go explore what we wanted to see instead of what they scheduled for us. The first night we wondered around the heart of the city, which is a very manageable size and easy to navigate. Universities here start very late, this was the last weekend before school started for the students so there was a lot of music and street performances going on which was great to see. For dinner (which happens much earlier here than in Barcelona) Caroline and I found this tiny little pizza place where the woman running it was our server and the one making the fresh pizza! It was delicious.
The second day, we had a scheduled food tour in the morning which was very interesting. They brought us to their big fresh markets (much like the Boqueria here in Barcelona) and we got to try Pate, which was...interesting. I think if I had eaten it before I had known what it was, I would have enjoyed it much more, but thinking about duck liver is not the most appetizing thing. After that we got to try some local wine and cheese that were stinky but amazing. Then our tour guide took us around to some of the famous churches in the town which were very beautiful. Once the tour was over we had the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted, so what did we do? We shopped of course. Everything was pretty expensive so we didn't end up buying very much at all, but going to all these hip french stores was amazing. The way people dress in this town, and I am guessing all of France, makes me feel like I know nothing about fashion what so ever. They all wear these very simple but elegant/hip clothes with even better shoes that makes me long to look like them one day. A girl can dream right? After about five hours of wondering through the city, we went back to our hotel to relax for a while and attempt to find a TV station in english. We decided to be a little more local with dinner this evening and just got a baguette, cheese, and a bottle of wine and ate it in the main square.
The next day we got up early and drove two hours to the town of Carcassonne. It is a fortified city that has turned into a major tourist attraction with lots of people dressed up as knights and such. Again, not too sure why our program thought we should stop here, it felt like one of those things your parents made you go to as a child every year and you secretly hated it but you kept going back. I wish we could have stayed another day in Toulouse or gone somewhere like Nice which might have been a little more exciting, but oh well.
As much as I really loved most of the south of France, I now realize how nice it is to be able to communicate and speak the language in the city I live in. Not knowing how to say anything in French made me feel like a newborn not able to communicate with anyone. Lucky most people could understand what we were saying in English and were very nice about it, but my first reaction was to just say everything in Spanish and I'm sure I said gracias more times than merci. I have definitely been taking my spanish for granted. Ok sorry for the long post, here are some pictures from the weekend:
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