Our Blog - March Miscellaneous Part 2

Pech-David is a hilly area just south of the city, which on a clear day gives a nice view of both the city and the Pyrenees. There is a nice path that is well-marked that takes you around the area. One interesting thing that occurred here was a Battle of Pech-David, which took place during the Toulouse insurrection of 1799. In early August, 1799, some insurgent peasants attempted to seize the city of Toulouse before retreating to the heights of Pech-David, just to the south of the city. There are around 700 of them but only 50 or so that were armed (and armed with bad rifles at that). The city was well defended with mounted troops, national guard, and the gendarmerie. The insurgents really didn't stand a chance, losing some 300 or so while the city defenders only lost 3 or 4.

Quite awhile ago (like, 2006), an urban cable car project was contemplated to link the two sides of the river over the hill. It took awhile to get started, with work officially beginning in July 2019. In May 2022, it started service with more than 50,000 people trying it on the first weekend. It is 3 km long with 3 stations: The University Paul Sabatier, the Rangueil Hospital, and the Oncopole (a cancer research center/hospital which opened in 2009 and built on the site of the former AZF factory, which exploded in 2001). Unfortunately, it doesn't actually stop on Pech-David. Perhaps one day we will catch the subway down to the University and take a trip back-and-forth on the cable car. Here you can see the cable car with the snow-capped Pyrenees in the background.

Everywhere, we can see signs that Spring is here! I have a couple tulips that came up this year and bloomed ... but only a couple so I think I need to plant new bulbs. We also saw a large family of baby ducks on the pond near us ... quite a large little group there!

We didn't do a good job of planning Carneval this year, as we had already booked dinner for the same night as the parade. We did catch a glimpse of one of the floats on our way over to the restaurant. There were LOTS of people out on the streets!!

Our wedding anniversary also came this Spring, although we are waiting until May to celebrate with a special dinner (the restaurant we wanted to go to wasn't available until May!). Instead, we took Lucy for a nice afternoon walk and then stopped at our neighborhood café for a couple cocktails: a Cosmopolitan and an Espresso Martini.

The joys of apartment living .... sometimes you can't control your neighbors :-) We saw this sign posted by the elevator (and on the door of the vidoir). The "vidoir" is a little trash chute where you can drop TINY bags of trash (think tiny little bathroom size bags) into a chute, which goes down and drops it into a large trash can (which then gets taken out to the curb). So on each floor in this building, there is a little trash chute in a room off the hallway. Over the last few weeks, we have seen people who take their kitchen-sized trash bags and leave them in the room (which is only like 3-ft by 3-ft). So we have no idea who wrote this note (the building maintenance guy or someone who lives on this floor), but it says "The vidoir is not a local trash can .. please drop your trash bags in the containers on the ground floor, please".

Lastly, a couple years ago, our favorite corner brasserie changed owners. We still go to the new café, because it is really convenient and the people are quite friendly. But we really liked the previous owners, Sandrine and Patrick, and they were really good with Lucy (they also have dogs themselves). We heard that they were opening a new restaurant about a 20-minute walk from us, and they just opened this week! So we decided to head down there for a nice (big) lunch before our Volleyball game. Just a couple pictures ... the interior is really nice, with some art-nouveau (or art deco, I'm not sure which) glass on the ceiling and along one wall. The food was quite good as well and we plan to try it again for dinner soon!