Toulouse and Tarn 7

Tags

Albi, Albi Cathedral, Palais de la Berbie, Toulouse, Toulouse-Lautrec, Toulouse-Lautrec museum

Tuesday, Albi and Toulouse-Lautrec.  When I planned this trip I had no thoughts of spending any time in built-up areas, other than Toulouse.  I had already visited Albi in 1990, including the Toulouse-Lautrec museum, and I really had wanted to just relax in the countryside for the rest of my trip.  But clearly that was not on today.  The weather for forecast for Tuesday was the same as the day before, though thankfully a few degrees warmer and with less wind. My options were limited.  Spend all day tasting wine in the Gaillac area – bearing in mind that I was driving myself around, and travelling home by plane! – or a further visit to Albi.  Or stay at my lodging feeling cold and sorry for myself.

So Albi it was. In 1990 we had had no problems in parking, as best I recalled.  28 years later it was impossible.  I drove round and round the main city centre car park, and found nothing.  I drove round and round the streets nearby.  Nothing.  In due course, I found, some way away, a meter space, and at least it was for four hours, not one.  To get back to the centre of town fortunately I was able to see and make for the 78-metre/356 foot bell-tower of the immense cathedral. (I had only the sketchiest of maps, of just the very centre of the town.)

Next was the search for the tourist office, to buy a joint ticket for entry to part of the cathedral and the Toulouse-Lautrec museum.  Nothing signposted.  In due course I found a building on the cathedral square with an old panel saying ‘Syndicat d’Initiative‘, the old name for a tourist office, but the door was firmly shut with a notice saying the tourist office was now on the opposite side of the square.  I followed a young man who had read the same notice and was heading 180° away to where we had been facing. Nothing.  He asked a passer-by, and I listened in.

The tourist office was in fact only 90° from the old one, slightly round a corner – and hidden by a large white van. The very helpful young woman inside was patient as I prevaricated. To cut a long story short, time was running out on my meter, the museum would not open until 2 pm, and I just couldn’t work out what to do.  Having in due course bought the ticket, I went to have a much needed coffee (all these wanderings had been under drizzle), and decided to visit the Cathedral, have a bite of lunch, go to feed the meter, and then come back to do T-L.

The cathedral claims to be the biggest brick building in the world.  Perhaps it was my mood, certainly not helped by the dull weather, but I felt decidedly grumpy and unimpressed as I entered the cathedral, even if it was dedicated to St Cecilia, the modern-day patron saint of musicians.  I knew that the ticket I had bought would get me in to the ‘Grand Choeur‘, but the high altar seemed to be to my left as I walked in, whereas the layout of the building would lead me think it should be to the right.  No-one was checking my ticket either, which was puzzling.  Anyway, I did like this modern altar and lectern.  And I was impressed by the rood-screen behind me, of which this is just a segment.  Once I had the audioguide all became clear.  The west-facing worship is the result of the desire to save the very intricate and huge rood-screen, carved from a limestone which hardens over time. At the time when Catholic worship changed to include the congregation, not just the monks and priests, most rood-screens were destroyed. Here, however, they decided to turn worship round, and have the congregation facing west – most unusual. What I had seen already was not the Grand Choeur. My ticket was to get me into that – facing East – and the treasury, and supply the audioguide.  I visited the treasury first. This window on the way up the steep spiral staircase to get to it is a reminder that churches were fortified in those turbulent days of the bastides. Then I moved into the Great Choir itself, which was very ornate, a great contrast with the outside of the basilica.  On emerging from the cathedral into the wet again, I went back to the previous café for a bowl of soup, though on seeing the menu I had a very nice salad instead.  Clever clogs then thought she would try another, seemingly more pleasant, route back to the car to feed the meter.  And couldn’t find the car. Found herself outside the metered area, so knew she had gone too far.  Felt very frustrated, not yet despairing, but really didn’t want to go all the way back to the centre and out again.  Then….. I remembered that I had my satnav with me, and that I had registered on it where the car was parked!  Only three minutes’ walk away but I would never have known.

Having fed the meter, I headed back to the centre and the Toulouse-Lautrec museum. This was established by T-L’s mother, after her son’s early death, in the Palais de la Berbie, formerly the bishop’s palace.  It is a splendid building in its own right. Another audio-guide took me round.  I did much enjoy this visit, and here’s just a small selection of pictures I saw.

Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec [father] en fauconnier, 1882 

La Comtesse Adèle de Toulouse-Lautrec [mother], 1882

Vieille femme assise sur un banc à Céleyran, 1882

Aristide Bruant, 1892

Views from the windows. The river is the Tarn.

Le Divan Japonais, 1893

La Troupe de Melle Eglantine, 1896

Yvette Guilbert, 1895 (ceramic)

1894. (photographe is ‘photographer’)

1896. The Simpson Chain was short-lived, and its only claim to fame these days seems to be that Toulouse-Lautrec designed a poster for it.

La Vache enragée, 1896

There was the chance to see more of the Palais de la Berbie after seeing the T-L exhibits, but I was pretty tired by now, and only had a quick look around.

I couldn’t resist taking a photo of a photo of this famous poster, though it’s not by T-L

These two also are photos of photos inside the palace

This one particularly gives an idea of the immensity of the cathedral.  The huge palace is dwarfed by it.

I was on the first or second floor when I took this photo.

By the time I made my way back to my car (by the tedious sensible route this time!) it was rush hour, and raining solidly once more by now.  But I could look forward to another excellent meal, courtesy of my host.

 

Toulouse and Tarn 5

Tags

Agout river, Albigensian crusade, bastide, flea market, Giroussens, Hundred Years War, Languedoc, Lavaur, Lisle-sur-Tarn, Toulouse

Driving from Toulouse to Lisle-sur-Tarn. Driving an unfamiliar car is always a bit nerve-wracking for me, so when a rainstorm started while I was on the shuttle bus to collect the hire car, I was a little worried.  Fortunately the rain stopped, leaving the gift of a cold wind in its stead, just as I reached the airport, and I found the car hire place with not too much difficulty.  A Fiat Panda was mine for the next three days.

I had plenty of time before I needed to be at my chambre d’hôtes/B and B, so I went the long way round, to places just picked off the map as having some tourist interest.  When I got to Lavaur, I found that some of the stallholders at a flea market were starting to pack up, but there was still plenty to see, and with permission I took a few photos, before wandering around the town for a short while.  Its church was unprepossessing from outside. I stepped inside to find almost complete darkness, and total silence.  I felt cushioned by the silence. No traffic noise, no resonance, not a rustle, no sacred muzak, no electric hum. Absolute, total silence. Lovely – a tiny bit spooky even.

In these photos, the camera lightens the view I saw, though I have photoshopped the first to indicate how my eyes first perceived the interior. The only other thing of interest I noticed in the small town was this Halle aux Grains. Whereas the concert hall in Toulouse had been hexagonal, this one had twelve sides. (OK, it was dodecagonal.)  I moved on to the next village highlighted on my map, Giroussens. A great viewpoint, with an interesting field shaped by the bend in the River Agout, but it was beginning to blow hard now, presaging rain, I feared.  I walked a little way on to the church, (many in the area have a semi-fortified look, recalling the bastides built in the times when village life was not as tranquil as it is now, what with the Albigensian Crusade and the Hundred Years War). And then I went briefly down a little road just to have a quick look at the chateau, now a porcelain centre.   Not a soul around anywhere!It was good to get back to the car, and make for my final destination, Lisle-sur-Tarn, the arcaded town square of which I had a brief and very sunny memory from 1990.

When I found my lodging, it was slightly outside the town, a former hotel of some 12 rooms, now having chambre d’hôte status, with only four rooms in use.  (My host told me in due course that it had been going to cost him far too much to bring it up to approved hotel norms.) I turned out to be the only guest for the entire stay.  No respectable French person was going to take an impulsive break in such weather! David, the host, who ran the place on his own, was an excellent trained cook, who used much produce from his own garden.  I appreciated all this greatly as I took my evening meals there for the three nights,  He was very garrulous (which tested my French quite hard, as his rapid musings were expressed in a delightful, but sometimes difficult to understand, Midi accent!)  But he was kind and attentive. It wasn’t his fault that the weather was worse, for the time of year he, or, he said, his father could ever remember.

This area, Languedoc, was the reason for my trip, based on my 1990 souvenirs of wonderful sunshine and fields full of wild flowers.  I had been intending just to relax and wander around in the countryside, with few plans other than taking the occasional coffee on hilltop village café terrace. Clearly, given that the weather was now forecast to be much worse than it had been before I set off two days previously, I was going to have to rethink how I was going to spend my time.

Toulouse and Tarn 4

Tags

Canal de Brienne, Canal du Midi, EDF Bazacle, Garonne, Gregory the Great, hydroelectric, Japanese garden, La Ville Rose, le Capitole, St-Sernin, Toulouse

Sunday, final hours in Toulouse. Although there was a chill in the air, there was some blue sky this morning, and no showers came to spoil my wanderings until the very end.  I decided to make again for the romanesque St-Sernin basilica, seen just from the outside on Friday. I chanced to arrive just as a service had ended. Indeed the organ was still playing, and I just stood and listened for a while. It is total coincidence that the music swelled as I zoomed the video below onto the high altar.

This huge basilica pleased me much more than the cathedral had the day before, and its architectural style reminded me of my visually favourite churches in Poitiers, which I left seven years ago.  (I kept being reminded of things that morning.) 

This bust of Pope Gregory the Great, 540 -604AD , reminded me of my ‘A’ level history studies.

I walked on

Toulouse is not known as ‘La Ville Rose’ for nothing.

to another public park, the Jardins Compans-Caffarelli. This contained an award-winning Japanese garden.

A fun rope climbing frame, in the main park

I found myself thinking of Old Faithful now.

A recent memorial to African slavery

From here, having picked up a filled baguette for my lunch, I walked

The short Canal de Brienne, linking the Garonne with the Canal du Midi

to the banks of the big river once more, to visit the Espace EDF Bazacle,  the still functioning hydroelectric plant. This was built in 1888 to provide electricity for Toulouse’s public lighting, to the fear of many, and the resentment of the gas company which had fulfilled that function hitherto. Bazacle had been a mill since the middle ages, associated through time with such products as cereals, paper, and latterly tobacco.

 

I now understood why, when I had stood on the banks of the Garonne on Friday, there had been such a noise coming from downstream.

A picture in the exhibition (in reverse it would appear) showing a lesser flow of water than today’s

It is the calm water nearby which produces the electricity, flowing through turbines under the construction to the right

The Bazacle plant depends on the swift flow of water. This kind of turbine is appropriate to great falls of water in mountain areas.

A flower solar electricity installation, the petals of which open to catch the sun

Part of the works

There was a pleasant terrace here, so I took the opportunity of eating my baguette in the open air.

Fish ladder

Interesting oval lock on the linking Canal de Brienne, at its junction with the Garonne (behind)

Shortly after I set off, passing the above lock, for my hotel, it started drizzling and then raining again, so I didn’t linger, except at the place du Capitole for a final coffee. Having collected my luggage, I set off to find the shuttle bus for the Airport, not for a flight, but to pick up a hire car.

Toulouse and Tarn 3

Tags

Earthquake, evolution, Muséum de Toulouse, plate tectonics, seismograph, Toulouse, Toulouse Museum

Muséum de Toulouse. (I can only speculate as to why they don’t they use the French word musée.) I had no idea what kind of museum this was going to be; it was just a means of staying dry as far as I was concerned. But I was delighted to find that it was of geology and natural history, and of the interaction of the two, which was perfectly to my taste.  There was a sort of pre-entrance with an exhibition about the chemical elements which I found bizarre, possibly trendy, and I hoped that this was not a bad omen.  It was not:  I found rest of the museum excellent.

It was fun to see, at the real entrance, three cartoon  of animals, all of which I had seen in the wild in very recent years:  brown/grizzly bear, wolf, and lynx.  The first exhibits were of mineral specimens.  Eat your heart out, crystal shops of Glastonbury – my reflection gives an idea of the size of these. The rest were of a more reasonable size.  (I took many, many photos throughout the museum, and could have taken many more.  In this post are just a small selection of those I did take.)

Next it was earthquakes. These little models indicate the destruction occurring in earthquakes on various  degrees of the Richter scale. You could stand on a metal plate which shook you as you watched a video, presumably taken on a web-cam, of the effects on an earthquake in a real home.  The gentleman reading his paper at the outset left the house after a longer period than I would have put up with. Perhaps he was accustomed to minor earthquakes, and thought there was nothing to worry about.  His exit when it did come was very hasty!

This is a beautiful old Chinese (or was it Japanese?) seismograph.  Each of the dragons has a ball in its mouth.  The first one to fall into a frog’s mouth during an earthquake indicates its direction.

Then came plate tectonics.  I could sit and watch the dance of the plates over the last 600 million years for ever.  I find it infinitely fascinating. And this video takes the dance forward, to show how the Mediterranean will close up in due course.

Living creatures next, classification and characteristics.  I loved these skeletons.

A bear attacking a deer I think

A huge area was given over to the exhibition of creatures by their classes, and explanations.  There was a risk that this could have been a rather old-fashioned display, rows of animals pinned up behind windows, but it was so well presented that it worked.  I confess that I failed to notice the blue lines indicating relationships in this exhibit, until I saw the photo.

Marsupials

When I got to the apes, I said to myself, tongue in cheek, ‘Wot, no human?’.  But there were several images on the screen at the end of the window, this one comparing homo sapiens with a gorilla. Upstairs, the next room linked together the geology of the inanimate with the evolution of the animate, geological period by geological period, with illustrations of how the tectonic plates were located at any particular time.  I was beginning to flag by now, especially as I had not yet had any lunch, so did not give this the time I would have liked. Here are just a few of the maps of how the earth’s plates were at the given time, and even fewer of the fossil exhibits. The museum would need several visits to do it justice.

 

I don’t have a great interest in fossils, though I do appreciate their ability to date a given rock, but I loved this petrified slice of tree trunk. I just whizzed through the last room, illustrating how living creatures function. If ever I have to spend another wet day in Toulouse, I know where I shall head!

Toulouse and Tarn 2

Tags

Canal du Midi, Franco-Prussian War, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, St-Exupery, Toulouse

Toulouse, Saturday. It had clearly rained overnight and was just starting to clear as I left L’Ours Blanc after breakfast.  A major daily market (Le marché Victor Hugo) was just opposite, so after a quick look around that, I set off on another walk, which was planned to include some considerable time indoors.  In fact the weather was not as appalling as had been forecast, and for most of my tour today I did not open my umbrella.  I made my way down to the Cathédrale St-Etienne, which curiously was made up of two very different and offset parts, as can be seen from this plan,

The small print includes the word ‘romane’. This is not Roman, but romanesque, a trap for many tourism translators.

from this backwards look,

 

(forwards look from the same spot)

and this sideways view, taken from as far away as I could get.  I have to say, I was not particularly thrilled by this building, but perhaps the weather, which was not only damp but cold, was affecting my mood.

My planned walk took me past via the Monuments aux Morts, where there was a ceremony going on.

Apartments lining a long green walk

At the other end, a monument to those who died in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war

A series of adjacent public parks was my next goal, and I was amused to discover that the Grand Rond was also known as the Boulingrin – from ‘bowling green’! (Though I saw no-where for that game, or boules for that matter, to be played.) 

Now why did I suddenly think of the UK Parliament when I saw this duck-house?!

Antoine St-Exupéry

In due course I arrived at the Jardin des Plantes, where the grey sky did not enhance the vegetation, of which I took few photos.

A recent monument to those in the Midi-Pyrénées region who saved the lived of Jews during WWII

I could find nothing about this, but imagine the gateway itself dates from classical Roman times.

But I was delighted to find that around this waterfall was not just one family of ducks and recently hatched ducklings, but another with rather older ones.  There was other wildlife in the park.

Red squirrel, common in France as grey ones have not yet spread much from the SE of the country to oust them

Terrapin

A proud cockerel, in fact leading his harem

After this I spent a long while in the Muséum de Toulouse, a really excellent earth sciences collection, the entire subject of the next post.  From here I made my way to the Canal du Midi, which runs at this point roughly parallel and about a mile from the Garonne. I hoped for lovely views, as I had experienced elsewhere on that canal some years previously.  But no, there was a main road running beside it on both sides, and again the grey skies made it look even less interesting. And it was starting to rain, and it was cold. Looking backwards, shortly before I left the canalside, I was able to confirm that the water, as I had sensed, had indeed for a short while been above the level of my head.  My walk took me past this commemorative statue, and to a bookshop to find a map for the second part of my trip.

 

As I left the FNAC (which chain I had been told 30 years previously was ‘a very good bookshop’, but which is now much more concerned with multimedia) it was pouring once more and I was only too pleased to get back to my hotel, via Le Capitole where I bought a ticket for an evening concert, and an organic food store where I picked up a snack for my evening meal.

You would think that since: I had bought my concert ticket at Le Capitole; which had an auditorium (well, I learned later that it was more an opera house); the orchestra giving the concert was called the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse; and there being nothing on the handbill or ticket to say where the concert was – that it would be at Le Capitole itself.  So when I turned up a in very good time for the start of the concert and found not a single door opened in either Le Capitole or the Hotel de Ville, after two complete tours around both, I was completely mystified.

I found one light on behind one door, the stage door.  So I was pleased to find that this would open, and that a concierge was there, so I was able to ask how I could get in to the concert.  He told me there was no performance that evening, to which I replied that I had bought a ticket for one that very afternoon.  Ah, I wanted the Halle aux Grains, he told me.  Where was that I asked.  (Le Capitole being so close to my hotel, I had left my map in my room.)  Did I know the Metro?  No, I hadn’t used it (and didn’t fancy having to faff around now discovering how it worked.)

Anyway, thanks to him and a couple of other good citizens of Toulouse, I arrived on foot at the Halle aux Grains (via the afore-mentioned Monuments aux Morts) just in time not to get in for Schumann’s Manfred Overture. When I was let in afterwards to a convenient seat marginally better than the one I had bought (its proper tenant had not turned up), I enjoyed an excellent Prokofiev Second Violin Concerto and Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony (called Héroique in French).

Photo snuck during applause, French horns taking their bow

This really was a first-class concert and I was glad to have made the effort, the enjoyment added to by a good chat with the geography professor mentioned in my previous post.  She told me that this hexagonal building, the home of this orchestra for the last 40 years, had, after it stopped serving as a cereals market, been among other things a boxing venue!

 

It was absolutely tipping it down when I emerged after the concert, and I decided that the time had come to find out how to use the metro (i.e. how to buy a ticket for and follow that metro plan – with only two lines the latter was not a problem).  I was very pleased that I did not have to walk back the half hour, two stops, to my hotel in that downpour.

Toulouse and Tarn 1

Tags

Bernuy, Garonne, Le Murano, Occitan, Ours Blanc - Victor Hugo, St-Sernin, Toulouse

Toulouse, Friday pm.  I had a short break in SW France recently. I flew into Toulouse Airport, and spent two nights in the city, which I had not visited before, followed by three nights in the countryside, based at Lisle-sur-Tarn.  I had been in the rural area in April/May 1990, and ever since then had wanted to go back to see the lovely countryside, and particularly the wildflower meadows, which I hoped were still there.

The weather forecast was telling me that Friday would be lovely, that Saturday would be awful, and that the remaining three days would be light grey and showery.  About Friday it was right.  It was gorgeously warm.  By the time I had taken the shuttle bus into the centre ville, found my hotel (the excellent two-star Ours Blanc – Victor Hugo, but NB there are also three- and four-star Ours Blancs in the immediate vicinity – as I found out before finding mine!) and had settled in, it was mid-afternoon. Wanting to take full advantage of the only good weather, I planned a walking route, starting at the tourist office in Le Capitole, the fifteenth century keep (Confusingly in French ‘donjon’!) prettified many years later, right by the Hotel de Ville, which was quite animated. 

I walked on to the Garonne, which, like all the rivers I was to see in the following days (the Tarn and the Aveyron were the others) is very wide, an effect exaggerated by my panoramic photo of it.  I was beginning to suspect that Toulouse had an awful lot of students, though I was puzzled to see them here on a Friday afternoon.  From my experience when I had lived in Poitiers, and had taught at its university, I would have expected all the students to vanish back home after lunch that day.  But I was to learn the following evening from my neighbour at a concert, a retired geography professor at Toulouse University, (who had ‘loved’ her job) that its status was such that students came from far and wide to study at the huge university, unlike most in France which attract just fairly local young people.

A 16th century Merchant’s house, the Hotel de Bernuy, now a state high school

This was shut for restoration works

I arrived too late to visit the church of St-Sernin, but found its exterior very pleasing.

I couldn’t work out whether this was a heavily restored old building or a brand new one. It appeared to be a small apartment block. Its detail certainly seemed quite old.

All the road names were in French and Occitan, though I read later that using this old language for place names was somewhat fanciful, since no-one now speaks it.

Would I resist this chocolate shop right next door to my hotel?  I was intrigued by this drawing of a bear in the lobby of the hotel.  Had they had some famous illustrator to stay in 2013?  I took dinner at ‘Le Murano’, a short way away on the Boulevard de Strasbourg.

Magret de canard on a bed of varied and unusual vegetables