Monday is normally clean the apartment and do laundry day. Since that was still required, I slept a little later than normal and then got to work with the weekly chores. As I have mentioned before, I basically have a week’s worth of clothes so if I want to wear clean clothes I have to do the weekly laundry.

I have learned a trick for making the laundry a little quicker. I do the regular cycle and then run the spin only cycle after the regular cycle is finished. This helps with the air drying. I generally have technical fabric for much of the clothes so the extra spin lets them dry faster. I do have flannel sleep pants and those do take longer to dry.

I, also, did the apartment cleaning as well. This is fairly quick and easy as the apartment is not very big and there is only one person to clean up for. The floors are mainly tile so all it takes is a quick vacuum and then mopping. Both the kitchen and bathroom/toilet are small so again it is not hard to clean them.

After the general “life maintenance”, I ate my breakfast and listened to BBC Radio. That is my general morning routine, since it is six hours difference to the U.S., I do not get to listen to U.S. NPR until around 10:00 am. Morning Edition starts at 4:00 am EDT. WAMU, my local NPR, plays different BBC programs in the early hours of the morning so I listen to it as I am having breakfast.

The day was lovely so even though the legs were slightly tired, I decided I need to go out and enjoy the weather with a nice walk around Toulouse. I am glad that I did as the Garonne is running high again. My understanding is that there is a dam somewhere north of Toulouse and it regulates the water flow for the Garonne in Toulouse. For most of the time I have been here, the water level is low and the small dam/old ford in the river has held back water. Today when I went out, the water was overflowing the dam/old ford. It is nice to see. It is still not flowing as hard as it did when I was here in the spring.

Because I am bad, I stopped at Flowers Cafe on my walk to have a pastry and tea. Elliot had introduced me to Flowers Cafe and it was very nice and the pastries were great so I decided to splurge after the half marathon – it was probably just an excuse in my mind. I probably would have stopped even without running a half marathon. I had a raspberry and chocolate tart and Lapsang Souchong tea.

While at the cafe, I listened to men talking. They were speaking in English but one definitely not American/British. He sounded somewhat as being from Eastern Europe. The interesting part was they were discussing opera, playing a violin, performances and interesting topics. It seems like the Eastern European might be involved in the arts scene here in Toulouse. The other man seemed American but not sure what he was involved in. It is fun to be able to listen to conversations when people do not realize you understand what they are saying.

I cooked a light dinner as I was tired when my day was over. I cooked bake stuffed zucchini. It was nice to have the fresh ingredients to make the stuffing – tomatoes, onions, baguette, garlic. I had to use dried herbs except the parsley which was fresh. It was nice to have a good dinner.

After that I went to bed earlier than usual as I was tired.

Saw one of those things that make Toulouse interesting out walking. Jugglers practicing.

I never get tired of sunsets in Toulouse – the main picture.