Big Fun Day in Toulouse, weekend in Tarbes

These are from a few weeks ago, but just to show how lovely Toulouse is

As much as I love Tarbes, it's definitely nice to get out once in a while and be in a "real" city.  Although Toulouse is the fourth-largest city in France (after Paris, Lyon, and Marseille), its population is roughly the same as Detroit, and the city area is much smaller.  You can pretty much walk from one end to the other in an hour or hour and a half.  Anyway, what I love the most about it is how old it is.  There are some fabulous roman churches in the city (which was an important city in the Roman empire) that were built around 1000 b.c., one of them housing the remains of Saint Thomas of Aquinas!

Hadley and Saint Thomas of Aquinas

Since I only work from 8-9 in the morning on Friday (still slightly less than ideal) Sam, Hadley and I hopped on the train at 10:30 to spend the day in Toulouse.  Since I've already been there so often, there isn't that much of the city I haven't seen yet, but it's so pretty it's just a lovely place to be.  I had just spent a lovely day there with my friend Melina when she came to visit me a couple weeks ago, so Friday we really didn't need to do anything besides eat and shop and sit in lovely cafés.  We were lucky enough to be there while the Christmas Market was open, so the first thing we did when we got into the city was head to the market to see what we could find for lunch.  We got tartiflette, which is a mix of cheese, potatoes, and ham, and it's YUMMY!  We washed it down with some vin chaud, or warm spiced wine, then we all had some shopping to do for the gala on Saturday.  We spent the rest of the day wandering around doing a little shopping and showing Hadley some of the sights, and had coffee and dessert at one of the many adorable cafés in Toulouse.  When we got back to Tarbes at 11 we were all exhausted and went straight home to bed to rest up for Saturday...

Sam, Sam, and Hadley at the Christmas Market

Christmas lights at the Capitole

Saturday was the annual gala of the university in Tarbes, and we were invited by some of the international students we know.  Sam, Charnette, and I got ready at Hadley's apartment, then we went to have a apéro at the home of some students before heading to the gala.  The best part was getting dressed up super classy, and it was also awesome to hang out with French people our age and speak French with them.

classy and international!