France, Day 2: More travel-ey, and Toulouse
The noise of the street must have died out sometime between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., to be replaced by the sound of delivery trucks and garbage trucks. If Vegas is the City that Never Sleeps, then Paris is the City that Takes a Brief Nap in the middle of the night. We woke to light streaming in our windows at about 7:30, packed up our oatcakes and apples, and headed out to enjoy an hour or so before our train. We found a chain coffee and bread place, Pomme du Pain (apple of bread?) around the corner and got coffee, then headed just a bit further on the Luxembourg Garden.
I am in love with the Jardin Luxembourg. It is not really like a park in an American or even British sense … not remotely enough grass. Many open avenues for strolling and open niches for sitting, both of that fine white gravel (which dusts up your shoes and pants and blindingly reflects the sun) used all over Paris, chestnuts trees trimmed to rectangles, geometrical beds of grass and flowers (more accent than the main show—the people are the main show). And in the heart of Luxembourg is the circular fountain, and row upon row of green metal chairs. Opposite the fountain was a huge palatial building. Which we figured out later is the Senat. A world away from Congress in D.C. Yes, there were some Gendarme around the building, and I am guessing they were armed (like the fatigue-wearing guard we saw strolling the streets sometimes, with their tanned faces and machine guns) but it all seemed so much more integrated, less hallowed, more accessible. Less mystification around a building housing a government body which, after all, is supposed to be about the people. I think you could make some interesting comparisons between the American and French Revolutions, and the resulting governments, based on this architectural and symbolic difference.
It’s a bit like here in the UK, how the Prime Minister lives in a house on a street … a nice house, on a nice street, but while our President has his own White Palace (I mean house), here that is reserved for Queen & Co. And of course in France the monarchy are long gone, and all those palaces (and there are a lot of what they call ‘Hotel’s’ – which are mansions) are museums or government buildings, or offices, or housing.
We sat in the garden, sipping coffee near the fountain, watching the early morning commuters walk through the park on their way to work.
A couple hours later we were dragging our suitcase back through the garden on our way to Gare Montparnasse to catch our train south to Toulouse. The route was about 5 hours, but not the most scenic (which we found out on our 7 hour ride back). Flat (Nebraska flat) green fields outside Paris, which turned into rolling hills further on. The agriculture switched to vineyards just outside Bordeaux.
Luckily our hotel in Toulouse wasn’t too far from the train station. We got our room (tiny, aha!) and, after not really eating all day, stumbled out to try and find food. Toulouse is the fourth largest city in France, over 1 million people, called The Pink City because of the pink-tinted stone used in much of the architecture. There is also a lot of brick used there, it is an old brick-making center. I must admit we were really tired, and when we found the Capitole Place, I was rather disappointed. The city didn’t quite match the tourist brochure pictures—a bit more worn, dirty, and cluttered. It was a hot night and the streets were busy, mostly with drunk university kids.
We wandered down to the dry grass along the Garonne River, and sat down with a view of the Pont Neuf … which was sprouting trees from some of its angles and bends, silted up with sand near the arches, and of the floating bottles and plastic bags that came by on the river. Along the retaining wall behind us were huge photographs (part of a nation-wide exhibition I think, there were huge photos posted along the fence of the Jardin Luxembourg as well).
A kid came over and asked to bum a cigarette. Christien answered him in French. The grass smelled strangely like the summer grass (still with some green, but dry underneath) in my grandparent’s backyard in North Hollywood. The mosquitoes began to swarm up off the water as the sun went down, and the swallows (shrieking in a way I’ve never heard) somersaulted in to pluck them from the air.
In Toulouse, the Capitole Place.
The brick architecture, including a very strange brick convent with a tower.
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