Two months just flew by!

Wow, that went fast! I thought I was going to write a post after our trip to the Toulouse area, but I wanted to sort out the pictures, first. That's where I made a mistake. I still haven't sorted them out.

After the July 14 parade, during which the planes seemed to be flying even lower as they went over our house, we left on Monday in order to arrive in Blagnac early enough on Tuesday to pick up the first of the Americans we spent a week with. We spent that Monday night in Brives-la-Gaillarde, a busy town, even on a Monday, when most shops are closed. There are not as many empty shops as we've become used to seeing in town centers. There were plenty of people in the streets and at the cafés.
On Tuesday morning, we arrived at the gîte in Blagnac where we stayed last year for the big family reunion. You might recognize the hens. They no longer lay eggs, but still peck around the yard.
First off, who was on this trip. As usual, I will not mention full names, which I know is annoying to some, but the other participants deserve their privacy. P -- my husband, K&S -- K is my cousin from LA and S, his wife. R&J -- from New York, R is a high school friend of K's and J, his wife. JT -- our Nogent neighbor who sent his elder son to K&S's house about 30 years ago to improve his English and has been a friend of K&S since then. Both R and JT are psychiatrists and have been friends since K&S introduced them. Seven people, two cars (ours and JT's).
K&S arrived at the airport, just 5 minutes from the house, in the morning. They had time to get settled in and we went to lunch across the street at a pizzeria, the first of the excellent restaurants on the street. Finished lunch and went back to the airport for R&J. That first day, we didn't budge from Blagnac. We went for a walk late in the afternoon, but everyone was just a ready for a relaxing day before we hit the tourist road.

Toulouse
France was in a heat wave. Toulouse is already very hot in summer, but in this heat wave, it was unbearably hot, but we survived. We started at Saint Sernin, from there walked to the Jacobins, where P finished high school, to the Garonne waterside for some refreshing drinks and more and more walking. We enjoyed a nice lunch on a terrace and then had to get back to the cars at Saint Sernin. The one thing missing was a swimming pool and we were just too tired to walk over to the Blagnac public pool.
Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges
Next on our to-do list was a drive down to Saint-Bertrand de Comminges in the foothills of the Pyrenees. This is a pilgrimage site on the way to Santiago de Compostela. It's a beautiful site. There aren't too many tourists, so you can actually see what you are visiting. However, it's become such an attraction that you have to park in a field at the bottom of the hill and there's a little train to take you up. They don't really indicate where you are supposed to get on the train. There was a a little bus/train stop looking place at the far end of the parking lot and we thought that was it. It wasn't. Once we did get to the train and saw there were three stops on the hill, we asked where we should get off. The driver just said it didn't matter. I had to be very specific in my question, where should we get off where we had the least walking to do. (K had a back ache and none of us really wanted to do a lot of uphill climbing in the heat, anyway.) Visiting the cathedral is free, but the cloisters visit is not. From the cloisters there's a gorgeous view of the valley and the cloisters are pleasant to just walk around. We got a combined ticket so that we could visit the basilica Saint-Just, just in the plain below Saint-Bertrand. We went there after lunch. Lunch was excellent -- on the terrace under a linden tree -- but very, very long. I prefer Saint-Just. It's a simple Romanesque church built with recycled stones, many of which seem to have been from Roman Empire times. While waiting for the others to finish up their visit, P and I had a nice chat with the woman at the ticket booth. She's from La Réunion and wants to visit Paris. We had hoped to drive up into the Pyrenees, so close, but lunch had taken up so much time, we just went back to Blagnac after Saint-Just. That happened to us, again, the very next day.
When we got back to Blagnac, we found, as expected, Em.&G, and a friend of G's from Switzerland. He had just flown in and they were going to spend the night in Blagnac with us and then go into Toulouse on Friday for art supplies. We had an excellent dinner at Le Temps Moderne, on the main street of Blagnac.

MoissacWe spent a morning at Moissac, visiting the gigantic Saint-Pierre church, part of the old abbey. Again, this is on one of the trails to Santiago de Compostela. The stone carvings are fascinating and there are beautiful, colored wood sculptures in the church. Both JT and P had insisted we visit, here, and they were right. But enough of churches!
We took them to Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val for lunch at l'Auberge des Sens. We got there a little later than expected and after lunch spent quite a while walking around the town. It's so pleasant when it's not a market day, although, it seemed the lack of tourists is a problem this year. By the time we were ready to leave, it was deemed too late to drive the short distance up to Em&G's place and spend an hour. That's really a shame, but we thought we'd go up on Monday for even a longer visit.

Saturday, some went back into Toulouse, P and I stayed in Blagnac. Sunday, we all went to Albi. I love how they've restored the interior of the cathedral. We've been there several times in the past few years. It's one of my favorite places to visit in France. The cathedral takes a long time to visit, especially if you want to take in the choeur and the treasury. And after the cathedral, there's the Toulouse-Lautrec museum, with a little stop at the garden on the side. Lunch and a longer visit to the garden before finding the cars and heading back "home". JT flew back to Paris for a funeral and came back on Monday evening.
Monday, everyone was tired of the long drives, so instead of going up to Em&G's place, we went back into Toulouse. We split up with a meeting point for lunch and later meeting point for the river/canal cruise -- not recommended. During the split up time, P and I went for a long walk to the garden and then to the canal, to where he used to live. We had lunch with K&S. and then joined the others at 2. We even managed to get on an earlier cruise than we'd reserved, but really, the cruise is avoidable. For us, it was an opportunity to be seated and in the shade.

The week was coming to an end. On Tuesday morning, we visited the Airbus 380 facility. It's a shame the plane has not been the success it was expected to be. They will have to shut down production. We then spent another hour, or so, in the museum. We thought we'd have lunch on site and got to the restaurant at 11:45, but they couldn't seat us, even though it was empty, because it was all reserved. My own feeling is that when there is only one food outlet at a tourist attraction, they should maintain a percentage of the seating for walk-ins, first come-first served. The rest of the day was just relaxing and packing. Wednesday, off to the airport and we drove up to Najac and JT went the opposite direction to continue his vacation with friends.

To Najac and Back, part 2

It was just an hour to go from Cordes-sur-Ciel to Najac. We crossed the 13th century bridge, St. Blaise and watched a group of kids who had stopped for a swim and a few kayakers trying to get the feel of the kayaks as they fought the current. (Very little current and the river is very low in spite of the recent rain. In fact, they were going with the current and still had trouble.)
This bridge is already part of Najac. The hotel is just the next bridge upstream, within walking distance. We got to the hotel early enough to just rest. Having spent three days driving, we were ready to just settle a bit and have dinner at the hotel. This was our third stay at the Belle Rive and this time we were treated to a big room. Well, two rooms since we had our friends with us: a double and a triple. Each room also had a sofa and a desk or coffee table and plenty of closed space. This was nice for a four-day stay. We had dinner there the first evening and two other dinners -- the menu doesn't change enough for a really long stay. Everything was well-prepared and well-served, but a longer stay would have been monotonous, I think. The asparagus omelet from April has become a mushroom omelet in summer. I've posted a view of the fortress from the hotel before, so here is one of the hotel from the fortress. Click on the photo to enlarge it. You can see the hotel, the swimming pool and the tennis court. Since it had rained, the pool was a bit too chilly. We had another day of relaxation our last day there and I dipped, but didn't swim.

On Sunday, we went to Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val after a brief walk in Najac, up on the crest of the hill. The whole idea of going to St. Antonin on a Sunday was to see the town on a market day, except we couldn't see the market or the town (medieval) for all the people! The place has become more and more popular as they exploit the filming of The Hundred Foot Journey (La Recette du Bonheur) a couple of years ago. It was released in 2014. I had asked Emma to reserve a table at La Festin de Babette for an excellent lunch and meeting up with them. It was a long, leisurely, Sunday lunch along the river. After lunch, we went up to Le Pède to see the new kittens and show off the site.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in conversation, walking around, admiring the views, the work done, the work still coming up, the kittens, the vegetable garden, the kittens. There are three, but I only dared put up a photo of one. I'm a sucker for kittens and I'm not alone.
We got back to Najac just in time to see the austere church and climb up to the fortress for one of the last tours of the day. It's really very interesting. The site was inhabited before the 10th century because the area was rich in copper, silver, iron and more. All those trees we see around were not there; it was almost entirely vineyard.

By the 10th century, there was a château. The difference between a château, a château-fort, and a fortress is a château is inhabited by the lord; a château-fort is a fortified château, and a fortress is occupied by troops, only. Najac was in the Comte de Toulouse's territory, with a strong Cathare population. It was also the administrative capital of the Rouergue region. After the victory of Alphonse de Poitiers, King Louis IX (St. Louis)'s brother, in 1229, the city of 6000 lost it's status. Alphonse de Poitiers created the new town of Villefranche-de-Rouergue, upstream on the river, tempted the population with a tax-free incentive and that was the end of Najac's wealth. The château was mostly destroyed (there's still a square tower) and replaced by the military fortress, with a drawbridge, an offset main door, the longest archer slots in the world (where have we heard that before?) and more.
In spite of the climb up to there, we were still stuffed from our lunch and picked up something for dinner from the bakery in Najac.

I had promised M that we'd see dolmens. Monday, we went looking for dolmens near Martiel and finally found them. I had printed out the map and we only did a little of the walk, points 1to 5.
At the end, 5, there was a depression, maybe the quarry where they got the stones in about 1500 BC. There was also a cave. Paul and I did not go into the cave; we left to go back to the car thinking the others were just behind us. After telling us they'd follow, they went into the cave and explored and took pictures. They lost track of time and when they came out they lost track of the track. We were worried, having waited an hour by the car. They had the keys, so we couldn't go for help and there was no phone reception. Big, big sigh of relief when they came down the trail, at last.
It was already past noon and we sped to Villefranche for lunch, followed by a short visit of the town and then on to the potter in Saint-André-de-Najac. Since our very first visit, when we noticed his window display in Najac, we'd been wanting to go to his place.
The original plan was to go to Toulouse on Tuesday, but we were all spent and decided on a day of rest before heading back to Nogent on Wednesday.