Hello and welcome back to the second of seven vacances de printemps recap posts! MTC and I went on a grand tour du sud – our second, third and fourth stop on the journey were Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Pézanas. This one will be a long one, so grab a cup of coffee, take a seat in your favorite chair, and enjoy 🙂
Dimanche 8 avril 2018
MTC and I arrived at our Airbnb in Toulouse around 16h30, got settled, and, despite the rain, headed on our way to explore Toulouse! I had a restaurant recommendation from a friend who studied abroad in Toulouse a few years ago, so we based our evening walking tour with the restaurant as our last stop and went on our way. We were able to see quite a bit over the course of 2 1/2 hours of walking – if you are ever in Toulouse, I recommend exploring on foot. There are many beautiful parks and gardens to walk through, in addition to lots of little things to see along the way to exploring the bigger monuments!
We made it to our dinner location, Le Sherpa, at around 20h00. It’s a crêperie/salon du thé, plus it’s relatively inexpensive. I got both a savory and sweet crêpe for 10 euros! I would highly recommend the restaurant!
After our crêpes, we started our long walk back to the Airbnb. When we made it home, we started watching “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” (my first time!), but I feel asleep after 20 minutes.
Lundi 9 avril 2018
On Monday morning, we woke up to sunshine (a huge relief after a weekend of endless rain) and we packed up the car, checked out of the Airbnb, and left for downtown to finish up our explorations. For the most part, we spent the morning walking around and visiting all the churches we weren’t able to visit the evening before. Toulouse has no shortage of churches, so if you really enjoy visiting churches like we do, it’s a good place to explore!
On our way back to the car to grab the sandwiches we packed, we stopped at the Maire for a quick visit.
We debated if we should visit the last church on the list before or after lunch, but we decided to go before and it was evidently a good decision. There was someone practicing the organ during our visit, and it was beautiful! It added such a wonderful ambiance to the visit and the church was just that much more spectacular.
We stopped next to the river to enjoy our lunches in the sunshine and grabbed a coffee at a nearby cafe afterward before walking back to the car and heading to our next destination – Carcassonne!
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We arrived in Carcassonne a bit early for our check-in time at the Airbnb, so MTC and I took a short walk to explore the exterior of the Cité de Carcassonne. About 20 minutes later, we headed back to our Airbnb to check-in and get settled. We had decided we wanted to save the Cité for the following day, so we ended up watching a bit of Jessica Jones, relaxing, and FaceTiming my mom for the few hours between our arrival and our dinner reservation.
We headed to our 20h30 dinner reservation at “Meli et Zeli”, a lovely restaurant inside the Cité. When we arrived at the restaurant, we realized we were the only customers and let me tell you – it’s a bit strange to be the only ones in a restaurant with lots of tables! However, the emptiness of the tables had absolutely no correlation with the quality of the food – the classical, Toulouse menu was absolutely incredible. I ordered foie gras – canard – tarte citron and oh my goodness, it’s one of the top meals I’ve eaten in France. I wish I could eat it over and over again.
After MTC had to roll me back home, I fell asleep in the blink of an eye.
Mardi 10 avril 2018
We woke up on Tuesday morning to our hostess kindly offering us breakfast, so we ate a lovely breakfast with her before packing up the car and walking to the Cité to enjoy the day!
We spent a lot of time moseying along through the streets, stopping at any and all boutiques we found to be interesting. We bought our fair share of gifts and souvenirs before stopping to visit the castle located inside the Cité (free with the pass d’education!).
After our visit to the castle, we headed to a restaurant we had seen at the beginning of our visit for a nice lunch. I ordered a goat cheese salad, cassoulet, and ice cream, all of which were pretty good (absolutely not in the competition with “Meli et Zeli”, but good none the less).
We concluded our visit to Carcassonne with a bit more shopping before heading out to Montpellier. We realized we were going to arrive way too early for our check-in, so we decided to make a pit stop in a small town called Pézenas between Carcassonne and Montpellier. It was cute and quaint but I didn’t end up taking any pictures because we were only there for a few hours. After stopping for a hot drink and walking around a bit to enjoy the last bit of sunshine before a week of projected rainstorms.
If you read all the way to the end – thank you!! That took some commitment! Check back on Monday for post number three in the series 🙂
Until next time,
Michaela
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