France: November 11-12 -- A Weekend in the Pink City

On Saturday we got up early, packed our bags and headed over to Toulouse. I have often been in the countryside, but have more rarely investigated the cities of the South-West. That is, excepting a few trips to Sarlat, but that is such a small city it hardly counts. Toulouse is also in a slightly different region. It sits roughly in between Gascony on the west and the Languedoc and even western Provence on the east.

The car trip was dull, driving on the long straight autoroute down to Toulouse. Still, it beats driving on tiny routes nationales and taking 6 hours for the trip. The road goes by Cahors, and straight into Toulouse. I had my handy GPS to find the hotel. At once it felt like we were in the "big city" after having spent a week in the peaceful countryside. Not that Toulouse feels modern, in fact, it feels quite old. But there is traffic, lots of roads, construction, and other city-things. After dropping off Stig at the hotel I planned to simply find a gas station and drop the car off a the gare (train station). Easier said than done. My TomTom led me straight (well, not so straight, there are no straight roads in Toulouse, and some of them redefine the word "narrow") to what once was a gas station which is now a big square of dirt. So much for that. Then off to the train stations, where I drove around in circles, cursing, trying to find where the h*ll to turn off to drop off the car. The Europcar office was closed, I parked in the wrong place, and even after finding the right area the access gate wouldn't open because I had already spent too much time parking elsewhere.... well, it was tedious. Europcar -- please -- put up some kind of sign to your cusotmers so they know where to go!! I plead you!!

After finally getting the car where it should be, I jumped in a taxi and made it back to the hotel where Stig had taken out one of our favorite wines, La Cigarelle, a white Cahors made a Chateau de Caïx. It's a little fruity, oaky, very dry, with some spicy complexity of liquorice and paprika, altogether an intriguing wine with good balance and acidity. We headed off to town to find a non-existant market, and ended up eating a very nice lunch of steak-frites. (I had now learned my lesson and got a nice rare steak by ordering it medium.)

The afternoon was dedicated to sightseeing in Toulouse. We were right in the old part of the town, and walked along the narrow and crooked shopping streets. It's called the Pink City because of all the red brick used, a bit unusual for the area. We also noticed a different kind of architecture, where houses looked almost in the English Tudor style, with wooden beams showing and crossing each other embedded within the brick. A charming town once you get the hang of it. To me, it almost felt like it had never stopped being one of those little midieval villages, but just grown.

We had Sarrazacs "julebord" (Christmas dinner party) at a restaurant called Au Pois Gourmand. It was a charming place in a big villa a bit outside of the city. When we got in the taxi to get there, I tried to recite the address to the taxi driver, who didn't seem to understand. Then I said "le restaurant Au Pois Gourmand" and he lit up with an "Ahh, oui!!" and headed right off. I had forgotten for a moment that we were in France and of course everyone knew about the good restaurants. The driver also told us it was quite agreeable there in the summer. As it was we were seated in an enclosed glass wall next to the terrace, so we saw that it was probably quite nice to sit outside in the garden in the summer. We ate foie gras poached in cellery broth (an amuse bouche), a very decent foie gras terrine made at the restaurant, sweetbreads with pumpkin purée and chanterelles, cheese, and for dessert a pressed terrine of apples and figs. We had been eating better and better foie gras the whole trip, and this was the best so far. It was freshly made, served in round slices which were pale but with just a bit of pink inside, even a tiny drop of blood. With some sea salt and toast, it seemed a great end to our journey.

Sunday was a day to see the city when it was not full of shoppers and teenagers, so we wandered around to a few old churches, took in more of the old streets, and ended up at last at a little brasserie called Le Bon Vivre which served the most delicate cassoulet I have eaten. In fact, the cassoulet I had was made with cod rather than pork. Stig had the traditional cassoulet, with the unusual addition of a pig's trotter sausage.

Then off to the airport and the long trip home. Everything went fairly smoothly. The one frustration came when Stig discovered at the airport shop a bottle of the wine from Madiran that we had drunk the night before (Montrus), a truly magnificent wine: big, rich, tannic, with dark plummy fruits. However, the shop was on the wrong side of the security, and because of the week-old rules of no liquids in your hand luggage, we were not allowed to take it aboard. Some attempts were made to ask the shop if they could transfer the item to the shop on the other side of the security, which did not have that particular wine. But no. Oh, well, you can't win them all. Terrorists took our Montrus away.