Sunday Excursion

I decided to roll solo into town on Sunday since I figured no one else in the group would want to run in along the canal. I think that the trail is about 5 miles round trip to Grand Rond and I would guess I walked another 4 miles through the city. French people are clearly more fit than the average American, probably because of all the walking, but they make up for it by smoking a lot.

The public parks are wonderful here, I watched dance lessons, singing troupes and badminton games all over Grand Rond and the surrounding parks. Toulouse reminds me a lot of Washington D.C. Food establishments are scarce on Sundays, so I ate at McDonald's in lieu of braving the French menus and ordering process. One can only get so far pointing like a monkey, and at least I knew what I was ordering.

For the most part, I have relied on other people in the group for communication so far. I'm hoping my French improves in the coming weeks with the classes we will be taking. It's been reasonably humbling so far trying to navigate Toulouse with no prior knowledge of French.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures for today since I didn't want to run with my camera, but I found another spectacular church building called Cathedrale St-Etienne. It had a really memorable array of metal molds placed in pillars around the alter which depicted Christ's journey from sentencing to death on the cross.