When I woke up the weather was dreary and since I had been doing a lot the previous couple of days, I decided to have breakfast, read and just enjoy some downtime.

When I decided that I had had enough downtime and the weather had improved, I set out to explore some more and get more familiar with the city. There is a main shopping street, Rue d’Alsace Lorraine, which is two blocks over from my apartment. I strolled up the street and found a Monoprix which is a grocery store but larger and with more selection than the Carrefour City. I was happy to find it on the street as I thought the nearest one was much further away and I would have to do some real exploring to find it. Monoprix has a good selection of items so probably will be my go to grocery store for staples – butter, milk, cereal and other items.

The most surprising thing I found was a selection of Old El Paso Tex-Mex food. That was nothing that I expected to find in a French grocery store.

I had expected to find other international food brands and food that I would find in a US grocery store such as Kellog’s cereals and other American options but not Tex-Mex food.

I had been in a quandary as the wine glasses supplied by the Airbnb are quite small. For those of you who know me, I really enjoy wine and the accoutrements that go with drinking wine. I had debated for the first couple of days whether I would be able to survive the two months in France drinking good wine without having a nice wine glass to use and enjoy. As I strolled down the shopping street, I started looking for stores that might sell nice but reasonably inexpensive wine glasses. I found a store called Maisons du Monde that sold housewares. I went in and found several options for wine glasses. I did not want to spend too much on glasses as I have a too many at home already and did not want to figure out how to get the ones I bought home when I leave. I found some that were on sale and very reasonable so bought two. The one on the left is the Airbnb glass and the one on the right is the new wine glass. I had wine with my dinner was very happy with the new glasses.

The weather had turned out to be beautiful early fall weather so I continued down to the Garonne River waterfront and sat by the river and read. As long as the sun was out, it was quite pleasant and a nice way to spend the afternoon.

At the riverfront, I found that there is a SuperTri on Sunday in Toulouse. I gather from a quick Internet search that it is an international series of triathlon races. They were setting up the swim portion of the course while I was reading on the waterfront. There are free tickets so I got one so will wander down and watch the race tomorrow. I do not know much about the SuperTri series but it seems to be a team competition. It will be interesting to see the race.

For the rest of the day, it being Friday, I went out and had a glass of wine for Apertivo. I went to the same wine bar that I went to on Wednesday as I know they have a good selection of wine and I liked the atmosphere. I had Corbière Pépite AOP. Corbière is produced just south of Toulouse. I enjoyed it.

Then it was dinner time and I came back to the apartment and cooked dinner. Still trying to get a complete understanding of the induction oven and stove but dinner came out reasonably good and it did not take me as long to figure it out.