Several months ago, when I was sitting in my apartment in Paris and planning the amazing trip I was planning to take with the Sous-Chef, I had never been to Toulouse.
I suppose that I should let you know about the aforementioned trip, considering that i have been a bad, bad blogger, and you don’t know anything about anything that has been happening in my life since the end of June, when I told you that i had safely arrived in Paziols. For all you know, I could have been immediately devoured by a sanglier after posting said post, and you would be none the wiser. Never fear: this is not the case, and I have returned to blogging filled with stories, not the least of which is the trip that the Sous-Chef and I are currently taking up the western coast of France.
When we learned that Paziols this year would be a shorter duration than usual — four weeks instead of the habitual six — I suggested that we take the two extra weeks and do something special… like travel. I looked at a map, picked a few destinations, and several months later, the Country Boy was dropping us off at the Perpignan train station so we could head off to Toulouse, a city to which I had never been… when I booked the trip. Circumstances had changed since then, however: the Sous-Chef, the Country Boy and I had visited Toulouse along with our boss before Paziols started, and the Sous-Chef and I couldn’t wait to get back.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned my love of books…
If I haven’t, it’s a gross error by omission on my part which should be rectified. I adore books. I live for books. I buy books with reckless abandon. I smell old books with the same fervor that Mary Katherine Gallagher sniffs her own armpits. I. Love. Books.
Luckily for me, the Sous-Chef scares my somewhat frightening obsession, and so when we discovered a street filled with nothing but used book stores on our first trip to Toulouse, we vowed to return the second we arrived.
What we failed to recognize is that one thing that the two of us love even more than books is getting lost in new cities… a talent that we share and that is magnified in one another’s presence. I’m not entirely sure how we managed to walk around such a relatively small city all day — always coming back to the central Place de la Capitole to pick a new direction in which to meander — and always managing to miss the street we had so wanted to revisit. It wasn’t until we finally glanced at the map we had been carrying all day that we realized that we had been wandering in large circles around the very street we wanted (rue des Lois, for those who are curious)…
… strangely enough, that didn’t bother us very much at all.
We spent the day getting lost in little details…
… bags of the perfectly pink-orange brick in nearly all the buildings of Toulouse…
… buildings that were built with said brick before my country was even created…
… Christmas lights in August…
… dogs in sunglasses…
… Virgins in doorways…
… and, of course, this sign indicating a real estate agency with the same name as France’s most famous playwright.
Oh… and I bought six more books.