New Digs

Welcome to Argens-Minevois

Today we left the apartment in Narbonne and we are now in a little town called Argens-Minevois which is where we pick up the boat on Monday for the week-long canal boat trip with Ryan & Ben. As often happens, “kindness of strangers” played a part in making this part of the trip easy and stress free. Argens-Minevois really is a little town and our original plan was to take the train from Narbonne to a train station about 6 km out of town. We would have then had to take a taxi to the B & B where we were booked for two days while we wait for “the boys” to arrive from London. However, our host in Narbonne offered to drive us, and then our new French friends said they would drive us. Then when Regis was arranging things with the B & B host here, she also offered to come get us in Narbonne. I call them strangers, but actually we have gotten to know them all even if just through digital communications. 

Communicating with Google Translate

Our host in Narbonne, Patricia, was the one who drove us here this morning and we were able to do an early check-in at the B & B. Our host here, Martine, does not speak English, but we managed to communicate just fine and she allowed us to use a fridge in her garage to store food we brought from Narbonne since the only store in town has closed for the season. When we asked about a taxi to actually get to the boat since our luggage has grown with the addition of food, she quickly offered to drive us and when we said we needed to find out about a taxi for Ryan and Ben on Monday, she said that was not needed as she would go and get them as well. 

Our B & B

Our B & B here is a large new house in the French style, so quite different from the older house in Narbonne and it sits on a beautiful property bordering on the Canal de Midi. AND Regis is happy that it has a pool out back, although Martine could not understand why anyone would want to swim when it was “TOO COLD”. Regis however felt the 24ºC was just fine for swimming.

The town itself is very small and it only took us 15 minutes to explore it completely. The only market is closed and only one of the three restaurants in towns is still open. We did visit the Winery owned by the people who run the B & B and got a couple of bottles of local wine to take on the boat. 

So, unless something really interesting happens tomorrow, this is probably the only post you will get from this location. Stay tuned for canal boat posts later. 

Even little towns have cathedrals

It is not too cold . . . .

Finally the Canal du Midi

We will be headed down here Monday

Old wine making equipment I think.

A nice door in the town

On the loose in Toulouse

Toulouse Train Station (At last)

I had heard that trains in France were slightly unreliable due to strikes, and we discovered that it is true. On Thursday, we bought tickets to go to Toulouse, and when we got to the train station (Gare de Narbonne - practicing my French), the departure board had our train flashing with “supprime” beside the train number. My first reaction was “Supreme”, we must have gotten an upgrade, but Google Translate disappointed me by translating to “deleted” which we figured out meant it was cancelled. Apparently the workers in the one stop before Toulouse were striking so the train could not get through. 

The wheels on the Bus . . . .

Plan “B” was to go on Saturday instead, and this time the trains were running, so after a relaxing ride through the French countryside we did get to the city of Toulouse. The train ride was interesting, because the change in scenery was striking; around Narbonne and the surrounding areas, the only crops we saw growing were grapes for wine, and the vegetables & fruit in the market all come from Spain, so I wondered if France only grew wine grapes (Not that  would be a bad thing!), but once we got closer to Toulouse I started seeing all sorts of other crops including large fields of sunflowers and no grapes. Interesting if not really fully understood . . .

Walking the City (It did not really rain)

Toulouse is a bigger city than Narbonne and was much busier with large crowds on its many pedestrian streets. It is an extremely well designed city with many large wide boulevards with well designated bike lanes, parks, gardens and wide pedestrian areas. There are still the typical narrow alley and streets I love in these old European cities, but when a serious fire destroyed a large area of the city, they added these open boulevards and pedestrian areas for safety. They also redesigned the riverfront, so that it is mostly public friendly parks and walkways rather than industrial. I saw this in Glasgow, Scotland as well and it is a pleasant way to make these areas more attractive to people. It also reminded me of the very tourist friendly Halifax waterfront. 

Lunch in Toulouse

We took a city tour and saw most of the highlights through the bus window, and then went out exploring on foot to see the things we saw that interested us. After a stop for lunch, we visited markets, the “capital”, three churches, the riverfront and the Canal de Midi. By then my phone had decided it had done enough and ran out of power with the Pedometer reading 16 km walked, so we found a friendly bartender and sat with drinks while we watched the citizens of Toulouse enjoying their Saturday and waited for our train back to Narbonne. 

And now some photos from around Toulouse.

Chess match - one against eight

The Canal de Midi

The red apple-head man?

La Garonne

Its been a long day - time for a drink!