Balladins Toulouse/Blagnac

... sunshine, and 'who cares attitute' into the place (not literally mind- im not mother teresa), and i think towards the end, when id overcome a bit of the language barrier, i saw a little light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
I'm kidding of course, i am not claiming by any stretch, to be a messiah sent from above, and nor do i dislike france or the french(ive got good french friends) but sometimes after a little too much cheese and wine, it can start to go moldy very quicky.

... villages. These villages all seated on the top of the hills overlooked the brown and green patchworked landscape of France. Each of them were fortressed by stone walls and had cobblestone paths winding through their narrow streets. All the buildings were also made of stone and vibrant red collars of vines and leaves hung around their walls. Summer may be warmer but the autumn I think is the best time to visit if you want to see such intense colors illuminate the ...

Visiter quelques musées gratuit, (à cause du festival ''printemps à Toulouse'') c'est toujours rentable !

Nous avons fait le musée des augustins. Il y a plein de statues et de vieilles pieces murales des églises de Toulouse.

Ensuite la Basilique St-Sernin, très jolie puisque son cloché est illuminé le soir.

Et finalement les Abattoirs, avec un tat d'art dont du ne comprend jamais vraiment la signification (l'art modern...).

We were up at 9 am and showered and ready to go by 10 am. We said goodbye to our host and made our way out of town. We were preparing ourselves for a day full of driving. We stopped and purchased some breakfast items and items for lunch on the road. We stopped in Montelimar for some nougat. That is what this town is famous for. Conrad spent about 30 minutes there b/c they had wi-fi, so he mapped where we were going. We were on the road again (just ...

... was town after town with no countryside in between. No towns seemed to offer any campsites or accommodations (other than hotels). After about 90km I was done. We’d done so much yesterday I was starting to feel it. So tonight, our bed is in a ditch in the middle of a cloverleaf joining several roads together. Perhaps I have more in common with the people in Tolouse than I thought.

... with beautiful camo colored bark. These poor trees die with much less fan-fare than their Canadian cousins. Here, the leaves just slowly turn brown and fall off. But watching them slowly waltz their way through the air is beautifully entertaining all the same. And the satisfying ‘crunch’ as they are run over by the bikes.

This canal is beautifully up-kept. We passed several maintenance teams ...

... recommendation, and he told me he couldn't really recommend any - most of the good restaurants are very expensive, and the wait staff are snobby, and the cheaper restaurants are nothing special. I joked "So should I just buy something to eat from Monoprix?", to which he responded "I can't recommend that either." (Monoprix is a Wal-Mart like grocery store chain in France).

Over to Rue du Taur, in search of dinner - it's a ...

... able to go on this “bonus trip.” However, now that I’ve been there, I would definitely put it on the France list. So what does that mean about all the other places I am shunning because I don’t know enough about them to put them on the list?! Yikes… We might need to stay here longer… or maybe move to France?

We quickly found out that Toulouse in July is no laughing matter. It was HOT. It ...

... 00 or 8:00 in the evening; miss that noon to two window and it will be many hours before you get a chance to eat again! We walked down Rue du Taur, past Eglise Notre-Dame-du-Taur. For us, it was most unusual because the facade towered above what were obviously newer buildings alongside, and it was reminiscent to us of our little midwestern towns where tall facades sport all sorts of fancy outlines, but are just "fronts" on boxy little ...

... stab-in-the-dark for dessert turned out to be a slab of dense chocolate cake soaking in heavy cream. Absolute heaven, and, of course, all presented looking too good to eat. The waiter was kind and helpful, and I got to "fledge" with a couple of tiny French phrases. The Rockwell guys were delightful dinner companions, and dinner took a couple of hours. As is usual in France, but ******* the working guys, we got back to the hotel at about 11:00 p.m.