I went to Terra Tolosa for lunch as usual. As usual, it was very good. I tried a new dish – Enchine du porc which is pork shoulder. It was slow cooked but finished so that it has crispy fat on the top. It was cooked perfectly. I, also, had the Rillettes de Truite (trout). I really like the rillettes. Desert was raspberry Entremet.

This picture is the inside of Terra Tolosa.

The interesting part of lunch was a young man was seated at the table next to me. He heard Thomas speaking English to me and asked me where I was from. I told him and that produced a longer conversation which is always interesting. He wanted to know what I was doing in Toulouse and whenever I explain that I am retired and live in Toulouse in the spring and summer and Alexandria in winter and fall, it intrigues people. I guess you do not find many people who do this in Toulouse. I was asked about what I did for work before I started doing this and the perpetual question about family.

From there the conversation moved to travel and the places we had visited. He told me he was Colombian but had lived in France since he was ten. He wanted to practice English as he wanted to move to the United States. He has a brother who lives in Boca Raton (as an aside, his brother works for Trump, not sure in what capacity). He said he had been to Australia, Malaysia, Dubai and Sri Lanka. He said the food from Malaysia was the best in his opinion. He asked me where I had traveled and I explained my round the world backpack trip (pwbworldtrip.wordpress.com). He was fascinated that I had traveled so much by myself.

This led him to telling me that he was doing a project on boredom. He was critical of the way people spend their time when bored – screens, telephones, streaming videos. He believes boredom can lead to creativity and we should embrace our boredom and use it to our advantage. He described how there were different kinds of boredom that resulted in different things. I lost him on some of it but it was interesting to hear a young person (21) had such interesting thoughts on boredom. I have to admit I do not really ever focus on boredom. If bored, I tried not to scroll but find out lets that are more interesting. I have a great deal of curiosity so uses that to relieve my boredom – reading, walking, searching out new places.

Before we finished, he asked me about life lessons and what I had learned most about traveling alone and spending a great deal of time with myself. I told him the most important thing I had learned was to embrace experiences no matter where they came from in life. I explained my meeting two people on a boat from Luang Prabang to Thailand led to one of the most amazing experiences I have had traveling and spending a weekend with a Thai family and experiencing life with them. I had told him that being open to meeting people and accepting experiences was the best. He wrote this all down in a notebook.

It was a nice interlude in my life in Toulouse. I am going to have to learn more about his project.

In the evening, I did my usual run with Run in Toulouse. Had nice chats with Elliot and Marc as usual. It was hot so we did not run hard. Nicely, the leader led us mostly in shaded areas!

I am off to Andorra tomorrow.