This story starts back in 2018 or 2019. We planned a road trip through France, meeting up with a pal stationed with the military in Belgium, and our travel agent (ahem, Sarah) had it all worked out. Then, you know what happened in early 2020. That put everything on hold. By the time we were ready to give this trip another shot, our Brussels buddy was long gone, back to the USA. So we redesigned the trip, but the concept was similar.
Full set of pics at: https://france-aug-2023.cliff.omg.lol/
This is Part 3 — Toulouse.
Toulouse
We stayed in a place that billed itself as a hostel, but…it was more like a B&B with some common kitchen privileges. Example: we kept a bottle of rosé chilled in the fridge. The innkeeper was away on vacation, but her substitute was a font of suggestions for local places to explore, like the monastery shown in the photos below. We’d had grand plans of taking the train to Carcassone and exploring that walled city while in Toulouse, but … honestly it was just too dang hot to be away from the ceiling fan (a rarity!) in our room at the B&B in the afternoon. That constant wind from the Nîmes region was absolutely absent in Toulouse. It felt like our environmental options were either
- barely-tolerable shade, if we could find it
- cassoulet
After a long, hot, expensive drive to Toulouse, we thought we might do the next leg to Bordeaux via the backroads and non-toll highways, and the ersatz-innkeeper concurred. Spoiler: that’s what we did, two more times on this trip.
