Learning How to Walk: Arrival in Toulouse

Hello again! I don't know how often I will be emailing on this trip, but I am today because I know there are some of you who would appreciate knowing that I have arrived safely in Toulouse. I was so tired when I arrived last night that I could very well have been dreaming, but I didn't want to pinch myself lest I were to wake up! It is so beautiful here, I need to keep reminding myself that I have to move along or I could be happily stuck for a long time... I know it is the common experience of arrival for me, it is like teenage love, but that doesn't make it any less honest. Mom, Dad and I got up in Montreal at 7 am on May 7th and walked all over the city all day, visiting a craperie, several cathedrals including the phonomenal Oritoie St.-Joseph, climbing Mount Royal, feeding squirrels, etc. before driving to the airport at 8 pm. After a 16.5 hour flight, which left at 10pm, I had a 5 hour stop over in Heathrow and a 3 hour flight to Blagnac Airport near Toulouse. Being the centre of a huge Aeronautics industry, Blagnac Airport was small but of beautiful modern architecture of curving coloured glass and natural wood. My passport stamped, I donned my backpack and walked toward town. Immediately I knew I was somewhere amazing. Bike and walking paths followed all of the roads, cooled by trees as they passed through suburbs of wooden-shuttered houses with tile roofs. I got lost on several occasions, following the beautiful River Touche under a medieval bridge whose keystone bore the age-worn arms of Toulouse, the equal armedv pointed cross with a pearl at each point, instead of the River Garrone, and not minding the backtrack when I met a some little girls, with their mother and their terrified little dog, who told me I was going in the wrong direction. I followed the canal into town, walking under several 18th Century bridges, some carved in glorious classical reliefs, and was astounded as the city came into view on both sides of the Garrone with age-spanning architecture rising around me. Happily hopelessly lost again among the labyrinth of narrow allies, but beginning to become anxious as I knew the time I had booked to arrive at my auberge on L'Rue d'Embarthe had passed and it was getting late, I asked a young woman if she could give me directions. It turned out that she was going to visit her friend across the very street from my auberge and was able to walk me strait there! "You're very lucky," she said, switching to broken English, "L'Rue Embarthe is not a well known street. Are you going to Santiago de Compostele?" I was surprised, because I was sure she had not seen the scallop on the back of my backpack, until I realized that the only place that a sweaty foreigner was likely to be going on L'Rue Embarthe was the pilgrim auberge. "There are several people in my family who have walked to Compostele," she explained. She wished me luck and a good walk at the gate of the auberge, and I buzzed the intercom on the gate. Clements, the owner of the auberge, leaned out the window of the third and highest floor of the wall and invited me to come up and register. I appologized profusely for being so late, explaining that I had been lost, but he waved it off with his hand and a smile. Having been welcomed to my room, I walked to the nearest intersection of three allies which looked like the set for the street scene of an opera, perhaps Rigoletto, in search of food. In the middle of the inset square was a classical fountain, and it was boardered by small restaurants and cafes beneith two to three stories of appartments, whose shutters began to close as the light fadded. Being the home of France's second largest university, the city seemed to be populated with youth who sat in groups about the square laughing, smoking, playing flemenco guitar and singing mock-operatically. A bearded man, his black hair tied tightly back in a bun, pressented me with two placards of menus, pearched on unoccupied chairs for me to peruse. I ordered an oeff coconeil aux soumon, an egg baked in a shallow earthen dish over salmon and cheese, seasoned with herbs, next to a salade with a lovely vinagrette, French bread, and a wineglass of water filled from an elegant glass bottle which had once delivered milk to someone's doorstep. Today I have visited L'Basilique St.-Sernin, the huge 1000 year old Romanesque cathedral - the largest of all its type, which still houses relics of Ste. Cesilia, patron saint of music, and St. Francis, among others, and where my pilgrim's credencial was stamped by a bespecled gentleman who told me that I was the 74th pilgrim to pass his way this month, a substantial number - the 13th Century cloister of Les Jacobins - whose ribbed ceiling is held distantly aloft by a single row of mammoth columns and soaring stained glass windows, and which houses a relic of Thomas Acquinas - the Capitol of Midi-Pyrénée - where a large open market was held - and I have walked all over Old Town. I am observing the culture and beginning to understand how to behave within it. My limited French has served me much better than I had feared, and all but two of the many conversations that I have had so far have been in that language. I have my route set for the town of Léguvin for tomorrow, advised by the gentleman at the Basilique. Now my time is up on this computer and I am glad that I have been able to navigate my way around a French keyboard sufficiently to write this! We will be in touch again! Your friend, Bradley Toulouse, Midi-Pyrénée, France