Toulouse, France

Fait attention aux volets (notice the window shutters)

la fleur de lis (the symbol of the french king/ monarchy)

La Garonne river

A farmers market in the middle of the square

The main square

This weekend my l'histoire de l'art class took a field trip to Toulouse. We met our professor, Bernard, there and he took us on a big tour around the city. He grew up in Toulouse, and still has family who live there so he knows the city very well. The architecture was incredible! Toulouse is called the rose city because all of the buildings are made of red/ rose colored bricks. We walked thorough the main square of the town and through "place capitol" where they was a huge outdoor market going on. The shopping was also incredible, although we didn't have much time for shopping. It's so close though that we might go back another weekend! Toulouse is a very large city. It is right along the river Garonne, and is like a less touristy Paris, with warmer weather! We walked along the river for awhile and then we stopped at a cafe to have a coffee (tea for me) and to speak french with our professor. We then continued to see a monastery, the church basilique Saint-Sernin, and then saw other Roman ruins. We just finished a big unit on roman art in our class, so it was really interesting to see the types of art that we have been studying. My favorite piece that we saw was a mosaic that was only partially preserved so you could see the sand that the tiles were placed in, between the scattered clusters of mosaic tiles.
Later on when we roamed around the city, we noticed that people speak much faster here than in Pau and with a different accent. It was definitely more of a challenge speaking with other people there because they slur a lot of their words together.