Things around home
Carrefore - they are remodelling the shopping mall, there is no back entry now which used to be our 'short cut', so now we have to walk around the outside. There's wire fencing to protect the building site but unfortunately at the point of entry for the cars the footpath peters out, so it's a bit of a gamble whether you make it to the mall entrance or not! However David and I are regular shoppers now and usually find what we want without too much trouble, I still find the array of goods so interesting.
I have been able to help with Hannah' home schooling a couple of times, and I am so impressed with the NZ Correspondence School, the resources she is sent term by term are excellent, she has her own teacher at the school who monitors her on line, and it must be great for Rachel to have that support.
This is Hannah swimming under water.
Hannah's favourite pastime is swimming, she is so lucky to have a pool just across the road from the house. There is a caretaker who looks after it and usually during term time it is mostly empty during the day, so Hannah has it to herself! She is a great little swimmer.
We have been into Toulouse a couple of times and are getting very familiar with using public transport. Bus, then metro into Toulouse, a coffee sitting on the sidewalk watching the world go by.
On Wednesday 11 June we went to The Musée des Augustins which is a fine arts museum which has a collection of sculpture and paintings from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century. "The paintings are from throughout France, the sculptures representing Occitan culture of the region with a particularly rich assemblage of Romanesque sculpture."
Then off to renew our acquaintance with the info centre at Capitole, to pick up a couple of maps.
Just had to take a photo of this colourful dress shop window.
It was lunch time and Rachel had suggested we have lunch in one of the Restaurants on top of the Victor Hugo market, which is the biggest covered market in Toulouse. It is located on the ground floor of a large 1970's building. With magret (duck breast) available at a fair price, it has the best poultry, meat and fish in town. There are also dairy products, greengrocers, cold meats, tripe, and bakery stalls, as well as a handful of small bars and florists. The produce is all top quality.
On the first floor, the tiny restaurants prepare food from the market where all the fresh produce is actually "on your doorstep" and means some great food is served there. It was a bit of a challenge to find because there was a solid 'fire door' at the top of the concrete steps which was where the sign for the Restaurants was pointing, it looked too formidable to enter, and just as we were about to give up another couple came up the stairs, so we made out we were discussing something important and waited to see what happened to them. They just pulled it open and hey presto, they were in to the restaurants, so we quickly followed them and were soon seated and enjoyed a very delicious 'plat du jour', a starter, main and desert for €13.50 plus of course a celebratory bottle of French White wine (it was our 47th wedding Anniversary)! It doesn't matter if you don't understand what the menu says in France, it will be delicious no matter what!
Thursday 12 June - Jaspers school sports day. We hadn't had the opportunity of seeing the international school the children go to before, so it was good to get close up and personal!
The school is quite large and has good facilities, the temperature was 32deg so we were thankful that at least Jaspers team were able to do their sports in the gymnasium, I think we would have melted outside.
The teams were named after all the teams in the Soccer World Cup, Jaspers team was 'Brazil', they did very well coming 7th out of 16 teams, the top team won a very flash replica of the World Cup trophy, but all participants received a medal.
Penelope had been unwell all week so was unable to take part, which she was disappointed about as she is a good little runner.
The weather has been amazing since we got here, same as last year, but about a month earlier, clear skies, brilliant sun and hot, hot.
We have been eating outside in the shade and sitting out chatting until way after 10 as the heat of the day lessens and it becomes bearable.
Friday 13 July : should have taken note of the date! We went into Toulouse again, this time to the South Bank to look at the Musee des Abattoirs : "In 1823, the city of Toulouse decided to consolidate its various abattoirs on a single site. The collection consists of approximately 3,400 works spanning the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of 21st century."
Unfortunately, inspite of this being the International Arts Festival month, it was closed until mid day!
Fortunately we were able to re-visit the Church of the Jacobins
Eglise des Jacobins
Undaunted we walked across town to visit the Museum of Toulouse : "Founded in 1907 by the Association of Toulouse set in a mansion of the late Renaissance: Hotel Dumay. Only 100 meters from the Place du Capitole, it is divided into themed rooms describing the evolution of the city (the origins, the ramparts, the Canal du Midi, religious and civil monuments ...), old institutions (Parliament), the Toulouse artists, artistic life in the late nineteenth century (including an evocation of Theatre Capitole de Toulouse which was the capital of the opera in France), plus collections of local pottery or presentation of costume and folk life in the early twentieth century."
Sounds good, but have to leave it for another day, it didn't open until 2.00pm!
So we had our 'Jambon Baguettes' in a little cafe across from Capitole and were glad of the rest and some air conditioning. We decided to walk up to the main railway station 'La Gare Matabiau' to see what day trips there might be by rail, and then on to the bus station to do the same. We felt we needed to be a bit more adventurous.
From there we caught the metro back to Arenes and the the bus home.
In the evening it was again Penelope's turn to show us what she had been learning all year at her dance classes, 'Academie de danse', their show was being held at Le Bascala .
This was very much a Gala night for all the students that her dance teacher Maryline Cot teaches. There were 23 dance segments in all, including the 'grande finale'. Probably about 200 dancers took part, all the dancers wore lovely costumes and their dances covered modern jazz, in all it's shades and classical ballet with some of the senior girls doing their solo pieces. The 'littlies' were just as gorgeous as ever, always one or two leaders keeping the others in line! Penelope's troupe did a modern jazz country and western dance to a piece of music called 'Timber', and she performed very well (as you'd expect) inspite of not being well - the show must go on.
Err... Penelope's 4th in from left taking her bow!
The show was held at Bruguieres, in a huge theatre, probably as big as the Events Centre in Wellington, and it was a fair distance away, took half an hour to drive there. It started at 9.00 pm and finished well after 11.00pm, so we didn't get to bed until after midnight! A very big day all round.
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