My First Day in Toulouse, Sept. 7, 2008

After an hour of sleep, I wandered into the streets of Toulouse from the elegant comfort of the Soffitel (At 400 euros a night it better be comfortable!). The crowd is mixed – old and young, Arab and European – most dressed stylishly and walking purposefully as people seem to do in cities, even if they have nowhere to go.

My first purpose was to buy a bottle of water but with the inscrutable hours of French business openings and, more likely, closings, I finally found a bar open with a refrigerated case sporting Coke and Fanta and, I assumed, bottled water. Several elderly gentleman were leaning against stools. The proprietor came over to assist me. Not knowing even the word for ‘water’ in French I proceeded to try and explain myself, noting he did not have what I was looking for. He wanted to convince me to buy a soda and asked I removed my sunglasses so he could see my eyes. He looked at them and proclaimed with a smile, “tres beau,” and laughed kindly. What an old flirt!

I continued walking several blocks, observing the odd mixture of ancient and post-war modern buildings, until I came upon a street café that seemed lively. I sat at a small round table at streetside and ordered a glass of vin rouge. Quite good, it was 2 euros, the price of a liter of water. Old women passed by arm-in-arm or holding hands, teens with piercings whizzed by on skateboards or motorized scooters, all the women were wearing gorgeous shoe styles I’d never seen before (I love beautiful shoes) and everyone looked healthy.

The cars are small and there are plenty of people riding bikes on the tree-lined streets. Many of the bikes are velos, the smart citywide bicycle rental program like the one in Paris where you put in a credit card, take a bike and drop it off at any other velo stand. I was vexed by the same situation of not having a ‘smart chip’ in the U.S. credit card by which to rent a bike. I keep believing there is some way around this, but short of having residency in the E.U., it’s quite impossible. Hmmm…how to solve that dilemma? Oh well, move along.