Long weekend! (cue lots of photos)

Hi, friends! Since the last time I wrote on Friday, I've definitely seen and done a lot. France is known for having a lot of holidays, and, despite being an essentially secular country, it has maintained its tradition of maintaining religious holidays. These aren't just the big ones like Christmas and Easter. We're talking Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Thursday, Pentecost Monday (which is the one I had this past Monday), Assumption Day, and so on (I know I'm forgetting some). That is excluding the nonreligious national holidays like Labor Day and Bastille Day.

In any case, these holidays are known here as a jour férié - which basically means, no work or school! Yahoo! Truth be told, I've been eager to get started here, but the long weekend gave me ample opportunity to explore Toulouse. The weather here has been mighty capricious, alternating between "Gods be praised it's so beautiful out here!" sunshine and rain of varying lengths - as short as 5-10 minutes, to as long as the entire course of time I wanted to go grocery shopping today. I'm not sure what's going on here, but I'm definitely hoping for some consistency soon! So, umbrella at the ready, I grabbed my camera, pocket money for snacks, my handy dandy metro pass, and spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday wandering around the city! I had a wonderful new friend to show me around Saturday and whom I rejoined Monday for more wandering. It was great to have a buddy since Toulouse, like most old European cities, was not built on anything remotely resembling a grid system. For example, you can take two streets which, at face value, seem to be parallel, and they'll take you two completely different places. Taking a road which seems perpendicular to them might not bring you back to the other, either! But there you go, c'est la vie, so half with a tour guide and half with nothing but my good intentions, here is a mini-photo tour of the centre ville of Toulouse!

At the Place du Capitole, the massive pedestrian area around with the entire city is centered. This is the Saturday market.

Yeah, this is just a photo of bread. I thought they were pretty.

A place - basically, an open square where there's a break between buildings. There are many in most French cities, and they generally have green space, cafés, perhaps fountains, and so on. Lots to see.

Courtyard of the city's oldest hospital, the Hôtel Dieu, according to my 'tour guide' still in operation. I really ought to look up the various bizarre meanings of the word "hotel" in French.

Seven old men just sitting in a row, at another 'place' in town. The three teenagers at right are slightly out of place.

By this point, are you noticing an abundance of pinky-orange hued buildings? There are tons, and this photo (taken at the evening hour, which is probably why it looks particularly garish) shows why Toulouse is nicknamed La ville rose - the pink city!

Pont Neuf, Toulouse's most famous and oldest surviving bridge passing over the Garonne river that cuts through Toulouse. Apparently this river has a very strong current and a nasty predisposition to flooding (the last major flood before recent times went all the way up to this bridge's arches!!!) So - in the event of heavy rain, don't sit where I'm sitting.

What is left of another old bridge; apparently it didn't eat its Wheaties. So it fell down. Photo taken from Pont Neuf, with Pont St-Pierre in the background. Toulouse likes its bridges.

Back in the Place du Capitole, one of the more ingenious street hockers. Made his own chess set out of cardboard, and a girl sat down to play. They drew quite the audience, and I tried to surreptitiously snap this poor quality photo.

"Who wants to play? Give what you want!" Clever advertising.

Quick order French food that I love almost as much as life itself - the indomitable, the one and only, kebab. I also enjoyed myself some pastry, banana-chocolate crêpe, chicken and goat cheese with herbs crêpe, flan, and bought myself a box of pear caramel tea this weekend. Definitely eating well!

Picture of the mini-museum inside the Capitolium...so I'm not ending today's blog on a picture of food :)

Thanks for reading, everybody! Hope you enjoyed the photos as much as I enjoyed taking them.