Time Out In Toulouse

Two hours down the road from Clermont is the fourth largest city in France  Sitting on the banks of the Garonne river is the centre of the European aerospace industry - home of Airbus and the Galileo satellite, an old and venerable centre of learning – its University founded in 1229, a city featuring World Heritage listed sites such as the Canal du Midi and the Basilica Saint Sernin, a place famous for its saucisson, a town known as La Ville Rose due to its singular pink brick buildings – a town called Toulouse.  It is NOT the birth place of celebrated Impressionist painter Toulouse Lautrec (that’s Albi).

We thought it was time we pay such an interesting place a visit and what better way to do it than to celebrate my mum’s birthday!  So we packed our overnight bags, packed the dogs too (yes, dogs allowed at the delightful Hôtel de France), packed into the Punto and drove off to Toulouse.

And how glad we were that we did!  It was a charmed visit from beginning to end.  The hotel was ideally placed next to Place Wilson (its statue and fountain honouring the poet Pierre Goudouli) in the centre of the old town, but more importantly featured rooms whose décor I approved and the staff were most welcoming to Roly and Pepper. 

Alex found happiness straight away in the form of a Chocolate Market a few steps from the hotel, where one is encouraged to stroll around and eat as much chocolate as is offered to you.  We were there quite a while....

Walking around, the architecture of Toulouse captured the imagination, its famous ‘pink’ brick buildings making for a quite unusual and very attractive cityscape.  The bricks are a reddish pink, rather long and narrow and look very handmade.  Paired with the blue-grey louvered shutters, they give Toulouse its distinctive, romantic French look.  I loved the shutters, and prefer them to the solid shutters I’m used to seeing. The louvers lend the windows and buildings a ‘just resting’ look, rather than the ‘shut down’ or abandoned effect the solid shutters give. And how evocative is sunlight slanting though shutters and creating patterned angles onto a parquet floor!

In our (not long enough) stay we wandered the winding streets, window shopped in the luxe designer boutiques, drank slightly better coffee than we have become accustomed to, ate fresh viennoiserie at a corner café in the crisp morning air and listened to chain smoking locals discussing politics and football.

We bought a crazy coat and a character confiture pot at the marche aux puces under the eaves of St. Sernin, listened to a world class choir rehearsing a requiem in that Romanesque basilica built in 1080, watched diners queueing for dinner at L’Entrecôte restaurant not once but twice in one night (it’s their secret sauce apparently..) and ate Italian food just to be contrary.

We cruised the Canal du Midi leisurely moving up and down the locks and watching the city slip quietly by, sipped the most expensive glass of wine we have yet encountered in France in a bistrot overlooking the Pont Neuf, bought roses and rings, cakes and crêpes, wrapped up warm in the morning and sun basked by lunch time, walked and walked and walked, ate and talked and, at the end of the day, slept like logs in our shuttered bedrooms.

It was memorable and very appealing. Made us wonder if this could be the place for us?  It certainly has a lot to recommend it and we thrived on its big city feel.  For now, though,  we will continue to focus on our chosen spot of Marseillan as we have an idea, a plan, that could well furnish us with our future (yes, we do have to think of making a living somehow!) and that hinges on Marseillan.  Should that change however, I think we will be most certainly making another visit to la ville rose that is Toulouse.

House Hunting in the Hérault

 

It takes a lot of adjustment learning to live in a French village after a lifetime of city dwelling.  We didn’t come here planning to live in a city, so adjusting is all part of the process.  Most people relocating to France are probably seeking a typical – hopefully idyllic - village lifestyle. With over 30,000 villages in France, more than any other country in Europe, there are plenty of villages to choose from!

Plenty of choice, however, doesn’t necessarily make looking for a new home easier, and once the vagaries and challenges of French house hunting are factored in, it becomes rather a steep learning curve, especially for those accustomed to the cakewalk that is house hunting in Australia. 

You see, in France they prefer to either post a homemade ‘A Vendre’ sign and hope for the best, or sign up with an agency (Immobilier) and hope for the best.  The Immos don’t seem that fussed about advertising properties on line, preferring a good old fashioned window display to lure prospects into their shop.  Once inside, the prospects are vigorously qualified in order to find out exactly what sort of property is being sought and at what budget.  Once this vital information has been ascertained, it is immediately, deliberately and completely ignored.  Prospects are then loaded into the agent’s car and driven for hours around the countryside to inspect houses that are either totally inappropriate or wildly unaffordable.

 

Houses that are shown on line do not reveal addresses - sometimes not even the name of the village is disclosed - making a preliminary drive-by to check location out of the question.  Properties are often listed without a single photograph of the house shown, but every last square metre of the floor plan rigorously documented.  I don’t care about the cubic size of the hall, show me the living room please!!

There is certainly no such thing as an Open Home (though all French agents we’ve met would just love it if this marvellous tool could be implemented).  Home owners are always present during inspections, along with the rest of their extended family, a few friends, several dogs and the odd chicken or two whenever possible.  They always offer a glass of wine or cup of coffee, which is nice.  And we’ve come away with fresh eggs on more than one occasion. 

We are getting used to it, and getting very used to the fact that a ‘typical’ French house doesn’t actually exist.  No two are alike.  Unsurprising, given that we’ve viewed places dating from the Eighth Century (yes, that’s 700 AD), castles and castle towers, former caves (wine cellars, not actual neolithic dwellings), converted vignerons, reclaimed stables, old bakeries, part monasteries, born again butchers and erstwhile ecoles. 

 

We have trooped around a dominatrix’s S&M parlour, stumbled about a windowless hovel, been swept through a septugenarian’s sex nest, introduced to many convoluted inheritance disputes, stalked around a swaggering maison de maitre or two, faked enthusiasm for innumerable garages, dungeons, combles, dependences, pavilions and mazets and been drummed out of a couple of domaines.

We haven’t seen a single bungalow or duplex.  We’ve been roundly warned off new builds as barely likely to last more than thirty years or so, unacceptable to people used to buildings lasting centuries. We’d like to find a village boasting at least a Spar and a Bar, but by no means all places do, although every single hameau or village seems to feature at least three coiffeuse, the French being really keen on nice hair at all times, starvation be damned.   

We realise we have Chateau tastes and Bergerie money and may have to lower our expectations somewhat.  Okay, it’s a bit painstaking and frequently frustrating but it’s such a marvellous insight into how life is lived here and how little has changed for centuries that the positives outweigh the negatives.  And isn’t that what we came for?  After all, how many homes feature a fireplace large enough to roast a boar, beamed ceilings, ciment tiles, dwarf size doors, a disused tower and a garden six streets away? In France quite a lot.  And we’re sure we will find the one for us any time soon.