Picking up where I left off, the boys and I found ourselves on a train to Toulouse crammed in the steaming hot baggage compartment. It was there where I made a rather interesting business deal. Several nights earlier, at a blackjack table in Monte Carlo we befriended three girls from Colorado, and as these things tend to go, we bumped into them on the train to Toulouse and shared the 7 hour train trip and a bottle of cheap wine. During our fun but uneventful stay in Lyon I wrote my own choose your own adventure novel, meticulously planned and constructed into a 57 page odyssey entitled 'Escape from Zargok's Prison'. The girls loved the book so much that much to the horror of the other guys I traded it to them for a classic novel and a salad (the salad was particularly enticing given the lack of food on the trip, even though it starred my nemesis, quinoa). So all in all an interesting train trip, leaving me thinking I better write a sequel to trade from dinner.
Toulouse was a spontaneous venture so we didn't know what to expect, but we were pleasantly surprised finding great nightlife and very friendly people. Oh by the way mum I've probably extended a fair few invitations for people to surf our couch..
In the day time we walked around, looking at cool shops and an enormous public garden with cool fountains and weirdly designed bridges and stuff. We also rented bikes from the machines on the street, free for the first half an hour. So in half an hour intervals we covered a lot of ground, but the 150 euro deposit taken from our cards (yet to be returned) until the bikes are returned kept us on edge.
There are two things for which Toulouse is famous (that I know of), rugby and duck and luckily we sampled both. We enjoyed a rowdy evening watching France beat Ireland in an Irish pub. Gavin returned to the pub once or twice to watch some premier league football with fellow fans, returning nice and tipsy from free pints bought in his honour. As for duck I had it several times without knowing, because when we eventually got around to asking the late night kebab salesman what animal we were munching he told us it was duck. Good stuff too.
As we now leave France for the cheaper shores of Portugal I have some closing social commentary. The French we have met on our nights our are much older than us, but they seem much more childish. They always assume we are in our mid-twenties, a mistake repeated so many times it doesn't surprise us anymore. Also they dance like Year 6 kids, with lots of line-dances along the lines of the Macerena, the Nutbush or Yeish Li. Anyway it's a lot of fun, and a big contrast with the otherwise self-enforced sophistication of the French.
With exciting times ahead I sit on my last French transit by train. I have no doubt it will be as eventful as all the others. In Portugal I plan to eat Portuguese chicken. A lot of it. More than I currently believe I am capable of eating. It'll be a journey of self-empowerment, overcoming my mental boundaries. Or alternatively it'll just involve me eating a whole chicken. Either way I'll be pretty happy with myself.