woke up early but did not feel I wanted to leave Toulouse without even seeing just a tiny little piece... my german friend from Ulm has decided that she does not like to be called Ms Ulm and that henceforth she should be referred to as Clark's girlfriend ... she seemed to have same plans as me so we decided to grab a bus into city center together ...our bus driver was a joker and had all the women laughing in the front of the bus...he was quite entertaining to watch...he also seemed to have young women get on the bus kiss him cheek to cheek and seemed quite charmed by him...one beautiful lady got off the bus, two stops later a new pretty lady got on...we decided that if being a bus driver was like this, then it was not a bad life at all...we wanted to find the capitol building and town center but first we found a cafe...for requisite coffee and croissants...we had our packs with us, since we were not sure if we would stay in the city or find lodging outside. We then found the capitol building...and tourist office... there was heavy construction noise going on and of course fast moving cars...readjusting back to more urban settings is a bit of a challenge. At the tourist office we got our maps and the locations of the two churches we wanted to see as well as were the sport shop was... they tried to call the youth hostel for me but no one answered so evenings lodging was not sorted... we now had heat......my friend assured me that this heat was nothing compared to what we would deal with later especially in spain..but after having had so much grey and rain..having full heat back was quite draining... I was a little worried how real hiking would be again if even this heat was having such a strong effect...the first church we went to was covenant of jacobins, it was a huge beautiful gothic church..with our credentials we got into the back quart yard and abbeys for free. We met some french pilgrims who were trying to tell us of sights to see.. I saw the tell tale sign of limping on newly sore feet, I knew it well... also a teacher with a huge school group used us as an example of pilgrims, to his school group.. they were asking us our origin..when some of the young kids asked were I was from, one asked if I had walked across from america..the teacher laughed and explained they were still learning their geography...we had asked here if the st thomas Aquinas relics were here but were told it was in another church...then going back into the main hall of the church, there they were..at least that is what it said...but we were not 100percent sure anymore because we'd been redirected twice already...here too, my friend asked if we could leave our big packs and we could, which meant we could walk through town unencumbered..then st sermin church, which is apparently longest Romanesque church in europe...also a very large church with many areas to explore it had an ancient feel with really old looking frescoes in the front cross of the church..it had reliquary as well some out in the main area, some closed until the afternoon..we got our credentials stamped by a man in a back room, we asked about thomas Aquinas again just to be certain, sure enough he had been in the other church.....a lebanese syrian christian man, who worked there, decided to give us his tour... he spoke only french and clark's girlfriend translated.. he tried to explain to us the syrian christian history and it was one of the older christian branches reaching all the way into north iran... he was in charge of polishing all the wood chairs in the front altar area...he was quite proud of his church...he showed us near the end a set of marble feet sticking out of a column with a box on which was written, bellow 'saint christopher', he told us to touch the feet and pray for something we really wanted...of course we had to do it...
after the church, we grabbed lunch on a street closes by...I finally had a savory crepe in france, it was called a Popeye with cheese and spinach...hopefully I will become strong like him... then we went to try this camping and sport shop, I wanted to check out new shoes... I agonized over the decision but the quality of the shoes there were dubious so I made the hard decision to stick with what I had..my friend came to the same conclusion since she too has issues with her shoes..... the heat was making us stupid.... we went back to the last church and got to see relics in the basement of famous saints.. then back to tourist office.. now we were told in order to stay at youth hostel had to stay two nights...which seemed like a weird rule..then they told us of a gite within the town we had not heard of ..at first we were worried it was the one we'd been warned about with an outbreak of bed bugs..luckily this one was completely different. .... we went and it was actually more like a youth hostel...the rooms seemed new and clean...so we got a room...our kitchen sink drain spilled into the cupboard bellow when I tried to use it..and it seemed to take several attempts for someone to take it seriously...but in the end the owner got us a beer and a slight discount for the room ... we got some take away afghany dinner couscous and almost vegetarian dish to go on-top (I tried to ignore the bits of meat i saw).. and more .beers.. we sat in the courtyard on a picnic bench journaling and talking and staying up too late... we had a sunlight basement room and slept with windows open it took me a while to fall to sleep because we were in the college side of town and there seemed to be cheerful hedonistic sounding street parties till late...but at least today I felt I had seen at least some of toulouse...i found the people were really nice here... although it is the fourth largest city in france according to someone we asked.. it had a relaxed small town feel..
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