11th September 2018 - The long-awaited day for our trip to France had arrived. Our flight to Toulouse was uneventful and Sandy and I managed to find the bus to our hotel and boarded with a little help from an English chap also on his first trip to Toulouse. The information desk in the station directed us to our hotel, which was just across the road.
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| Taken on my iPhone from the bus |
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| Taken with my iPhone from the hotel where we had our evening meal - the station at Toulouse |
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| Cheers |
The next morning we boarded our train to Albi, which was to be an hour's journey. It was quite alarming to see armed soldiers walking about on the station forecourt.
This journey was where we had the first 'event' on a French train. Halfway to Albi there was a commotion at the end of our carriage and I looked up to see the ticket inspector wrestling with another man. There was quite a tussle and a lot of shouting with them both being on the floor at one point! The ticket inspector eventually got the chap back in his seat and began to make telephone calls. Two stations further on three gendarmes boarded the train and there was a long conversation with the chap who, incidentally, looked a perfectly normal passenger - not down and out or drunk as you might imagine. They stayed on the train for about twenty minutes speaking with this man. Eventually they left, the man stayed on the train and we proceeded on our journey. Two ladies who were sitting close to the man were moved away from him and two beefy looking chaps (?plainclothes policemen) joined the ticket collector and stayed close to the shouting man.
When we arrived in Albi we were desperate for a cup of coffee and went to a cafe close by and I stupidly forgot that ordering two cups of coffee would bring us two tiny cups of strong black coffee. We didn't forget again to ask for cafe aul lait!
As we were only in Albi for two days, after checking into our hotel we immediately walked into the town to visit the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum and the 13th Century Gothic Cathedral of Saint Cecile. Our first stop was the Information Ofice where we bought a book of tickets for the places we wanted to visit. This was a real money saver.
These are the photo's I took of our visit that afternoon. I took rather a lot of photo's, so first here are photo's the Museum and the Cathedral.
A few photo's of the museum - we weren't allowed to take photo's inside.
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| Just look at the perfect symmetry of these gardens |
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| Museum courtyard |
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| A small door - Sandy is not very much taller than me |
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| Museum Courtyard and Museum entrance |
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| View of the Cathedral from the Museum grounds |
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