Monday 28th September - Salle Gervais The first room at the top of the stairs, the Salle Gervais, was first used for wedding receptions. It was decorated by the same fellow that painted all of the painted walls and ceilings in the grand stairway. There are ornate arches all of the way around the room and the painting are meant to portray love at various stages of people's lives. The chandeliers are lovely and show off the painted ceilings which are not...

Monday 28th September - The Great Stairway In the last part of the 1700s a majestic stairway leading up to the great hall of the Salle des Illustres but it was replaced with the current stairway in 1912 and the walls were decorated by a Toulouse artist, Jean-Paul Laurens. There are huge paintings all of the way up the stairs and the gold gilding is magnificent.

Monday 28th September - Place du Capitole The facade of the Capitole building dates back to 1750-1760 s decorated by statues and eight marble columns. The buildings right wing houses the Theatre du Capitale. The inner courtyard is adorned with the coats of arms of the Capitouls, traditional magistrates who governed the city of old.

Monday 28th September - The Afternoon in Toulouse The Metro in about a 10 minute walk from the apartment so we headed off and bought tickets for two days and went into the city centre and got off the train at Jean Jarres station. We went up to the surface on the escalator and came out in bright sunlight. Seeing that it was nearly 2 oclock and we were feeling hungry we stopped at Hippopotamus for a salad lunch and a beer, small and medium. The salads that ...

Monday 28th September - The Road to Toulouse Getting out of town was very straight forward and with no turnoffs we headed for Toulouse. We stopped at a roadside truck stop for a coffee!! At least the truck stops in Britain make you a free coffee but here we first had to decypher the language on the machine and then we put our money in and both got a cup of very dubious cappuccino and a watery cafe double. Back into the car and drove the final bit to Toulo...