This morning, I got up at a reasonable hour after a good night’s sleep. My attempt to fight jet lag worked last night. I hope that it will work until I have conquered jet lag.

After I got up, I had a leisurely breakfast, posted to the blog and got ready to head out.

I walked over to the Marchè Victor Hugo to get supplies for breakfast and lunch. My stops were at the boulangerie which I like as the baguettes are especially crispy as I like them. One of my frustration with baguettes in Alexandria are they are soft and not crispy. I think you can get the soft ones here as well but they are called classic not traditional. Then, I went to Maison Garcia for Jambon Bodega Serrano ham. The next stop was to the fromagerie to get some Comte de Savioe cheese. Those three things are the staples of my lunches. I usually add cherry tomatoes and olives but I cannot get the olives until Sunday from the olive purveyor at the St. Aubin’s market.

I got some fruit from the fruit and vegetable stands that surround the market. I bought a lovely cantaloupe and some mandarins.

From there, I headed to the Poussin Rose, a patisserie that sells small pastries and bought some petit chocolate eclairs and small chocolate cakes. They are very good and are basically bite size so not overwhelming as some of the pastries can be in my opinion.

I decided to walk home on the Boulevard de Strasbourg (a large boulevard that circles part of the old part of Toulouse) and got a surprise. The open air fruit and vegetable market that I thought was only open on Tuesday was in full swing. I thought it was one day a week but it is open at least two. I am going to have to check it out and see if it is open all days of the week. I like the market has there are quite a lot of vendors so better selection than Marchè Victor Hugo and less expensive. I was glad I found it as I had forgotten to buy some cherry tomatoes and could buy then from this market.

I got home and unloaded my goods. Then fixed myself a nice lunch. It is definitely a change from my usual lunch of a sandwich of some kind. I like these lunches better.

In the afternoon, in my effort to get lots of sun light and try to acclimatize to Toulouse, I took a long walk along the Garonne and did a circuit of both sides of the river. You can see the results of the heat waves that hit France this summer. There are many areas that were once covered by grass but are now just brown patches. They do not have irrigation in many of the parks so the grass just dried out in the heat. The city is somewhat more green than I expected but you can definitely tell it was a bad summer.

I had a nice Panaché (beer and lemon soda similar to a Shandy) at a cafe on the banks of the river. It is one of the places I like to sit and read and watch the river.

Unfortunately, the river is not as fun to watch at the moment. There is a groin that was natural at one time but was modernized at some point and it is being restored at the moment. The water in the river is very low because of the restoration. It looks like they have finished the restoration and just doing the final clean up of the construction material. I hope this is case so the river will return to normal soon. I had never seen people fishing in the river before. Usually, the water level is too high and the groin is like a waterfall and rapid.

In the evening, I met Eliott for dinner at Aux Pied Sous La Table. A very nice farm to table restaurant here in Toulouse. It was fun to catch up with Eliott and find out how his summer went. It is nice to have friends here in Toulouse to see. I met Eliott through Run in Toulouse. We talked about how good running was for meeting people and finding similar people.

Dinner was very good. I had the slow cooked pork cheek which was incredibly tender. The dessert was cheesecake.

It was a good full first day in Toulouse.