Friday 28 June

Today we are on holiday.  We are going to do the sights of Toulouse and indulge in some of their good food.  So I shall play food critic for this entry.

We treat ourselves to real French breakfast of pastries and bread and then go off in to town.  The weather is not great.  It is grey and cool, but not raining or threatening.  We retrace some of our steps from yesterday and go to the Tourist Office in the dongeon of the Capitole.  It is a great building, but they can’t really help us.  They just offer us the same book that we got from the Harbour Master.  That tells us that there are public rooms in the Capitole that we can see.  However when we try to find them they all seem to be closed.

So then we go to the Basilica of Saint Sernin.  This is a very ancient Romanesque church first started in the 11^th century.  What is most unusual about it is that there is an area behind the nave filled with reliquaries from numerous saints.  The idea was that pilgrims came here in the middle ages and could visit the relics without disturbing the rest of the church!  There is also a fascinating crypt with a beautiful 11C casket said to contain a piece of the true cross.  All most interesting.

We then just walk around.  At just about every juncture there is a square, statue or ancient house with an explanation about it.   We wind up at the river - Garonne again, and walk to the Pont Neuf, which belies its name because it was built seven or eight centuries ago (though I can’t remember what century). 

We have now walked our feet off and it is lunchtime.  Yesterday we saw a sushi restaurant and thought that would make a good light meal for us as we are off to a posh dinner tonight.  But try as we may we cannot find it.  We wind up in Monoprix where we buy some bathroom scales.  We may as well find out if we are losing weight on our diet.  Richard asks them if they know where there is a sushi restaurant and they give us directions, but we still can’t find it.  We pass either very nice places offering full three course lunches or pizza places.  Nothing in between.  Eventually we find ourselves at one of the famous covered markets called Victor Hugo.  The market is about to close, but we see that on the top floor there are restaurants.  So we go up.  It is fascinating.  The whole floor is an open plan dinning area divided only by décor into about 6 restaurants.  They all say they produce food using the market produce.  It looks like fun and certainly it is just filled with locals, which must be a good thing.  It takes a while to get a table, because it is very busy despite being late.  I have a salad of warm goats cheese.  It is nice, if not surprising save that they have drizzled the toasted cheese bits with honey which gives it an interesting taste.  Richard has mussels cooked in a Spanish way, not in broth and with lots of garlic.  It also comes with excellent chips!  We both lash out with a glass of white wine (Gaillac again).  So after all that trouble we had a very enjoyable lunch.

So now it is getting late.  We have spotted a big supermarket in a shopping precinct under a station and go there to provision up for the next few days.  We are rather burdened down with shopping, but make it back to the boat.  We thought we would have time for a nice relax, but it is getting late and we must shower to go out.  I want to do my hair.

As I finish my hair, it starts to rain and it has got quite cold.  So I will not be able to wear one of my nice little dresses to dinner.  It will be trousers, again.

We venture out to go to the restaurant - Michel Sarran. Richard has told me all along that it isn’t far from the boat; that turns out to be nonsense.  We wind up walking about three miles in the rain to get there.  By the time I am there I am exhausted and we are a bit late for our table, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

I think this place has the best food we have eaten so far.  Again, we just choose the tasting menu.  5 courses, plus the amuse bouches etc.  First we get what look like Japanese crackers as nibbles, but they are clearly homemade and very good.  After that we get three more little tastes of things I can’t explain except one was a duck paste in a bespoke tube, like a toothpaste tube.  Finally there was the true amuse bouche - three little tastes including a small pot of cassoulet and a quiche lorraine in a tube of pastry instead of a pie crust.  The first course was the most interesting.  It was foie gras, but not as I’ve ever known it.  It was a soup!  The taste was divine and was set off by a Belon oyster in the middle!  That was followed by a fillet of sole with a ravioli.  That too was very tasty, but I would say the pasta was a bit too thick!  Finally we had roasted pigeon breast served with a wonderful dish of what looked like froth, but was petit pois and bits. Then perfect cheese and a dessert of apples done in two different ways.  With coffee we were offered miniature ice cream cones and three tiny but tasty chocolates.  All in all a great meal.  We even had a few words with the chef!

Got home very late and just fell into bed.