02.23.2008
Day Seven:
Centre Ville

So today is Saturday, finally. I started the day with a decent rest. I got kind of a late start, but that was mostly due to my laziness. Hey, just because I’m in France doesn’t mean I don’t like to sleep in. Shoot! I definitely needed the sleep though.

Also, just so you know, Lethal Weapon in French isn’t as good as it is in English. However, Sex and the City is still as confusing to men in French as it is in English, so at least that hasn’t changed. Hhahaa…

When I finally got on the road to Basso Cambo to get the metro into the city, I saw one of my favorite cars for the 90s, the Del Sol. However, over here it’s still called the CRX (funny) and it still slow as shit, what else is new?

Here’s a very poor self portrait at the Basso Cambo train station. I don’t really like this picture, but what the hell.

Here’s a picture of the Basso Cambo shopping center from the metro. Since I’ve been taking the metro at night, I had no idea what this place looked like, but the people say it’s the Pic N Save of the area.

When I got off at Esquirol, one stop ahead of Le Capitole, I found a shoe store that had the new Jays, something I haven’t seen in person yet. Pretty nice I must say, I think I’ll get a pair when they get to the outlets.

So the mall area in Esquirol is kinda like Melrose, but in all of these small old store fronts. It’s kinda like a mix of Olvera Street and Melrose, but with the prices of Beverly Hills. Also, the exchange rate jacks me, so I didn’t buy anything. Also, the one thing I didn’t think about, was that most of the stuff that I like is American, so I looke for American stuff in the stores, find it, and then realize its like 1.5 times what I would normally pay for it in the states and then I get pissed and leave.

I saw another shoes store boutique called Premium, but the bully owner caught me taking a picture and made me erase it. So I assume he’s not an authorized dealer of this stuff and doesn’t want to get popped. Either way, I’m calling him out as a loser for making me erase the picture I took. It looked like he had some nice stuff, but I’m not gonna buy from a guy like that, F ‘em.

One of the main parts of the city is Place Wilson, which has a giant roundabout in the middle, with shops on the outside. About every 100 yards, a street comes into it, it’s pretty neat. So you can basically go to any section of the city by going around the roundabout and then picking a street to go down. This is a picture of the fountain in the middle. There’s also a merry-go-round there that I didn’t take a picture of, sorry kids. But the reason I sat down here was to eat my lunch. I decided to get a kebab style pita sandwich from this little hole in the wall place by St. George’s mall, and it was fantastic. Look at all of this goodness inside, it totally takes Zankou to school. Yes, it takes anything from Zankou or Daphne’s for that matter to school. I need to open a place like this in the states for sure.

Here’s the ONLY nice ride I’ve seen the whole time I’ve been here, and it doesn’t even hold a candle to what they have in LA anywhere. I guess since space is a premium and people drive like shit it doesn’t make sense to have a nice car.

This big building is the theater building where they have plays and concerts; its called the TNT. I think right now they have something there now about Alice in Wonderland. I would go check it out, but the guys at work said unless I know French well, its useless. So, maybe next time.

I ended up down by the river again, which is called the Garonne by the way. It’s a pretty big river, but I don’t know much else about it, other than that its big, and you have to cross it to get to my apartment. Either way, I had a nice pint of Kilkinney’s, which is a little dark for me, but I figured id give it a shot anyways. It was a nice day to have a drink.

Remember how I said people hang out by the river, they really do. Even though the river seems to be kinda nasty, it’s a nice place to sit and have lunch, like all of these people are doing. It almost seemed like all of Toulouse was down there hanging out.

On the way back from the river, I stopped at St. Sernin, one of the oldest and largest churches in France. It was built in the 13^th century, but was expanded and remodeled in the 18^th century, which is really quite amazing when you think that this thing has been standing for like 800 years. This is the same church that I took pics of earlier in the week by the way, so check back a few days to see the outside.

I ended up forking out 2EU to check out the crypts down below the main level of the church. It has the crypts of like 20 apostles, saints, and other religious folk. It’s hard to believe that some of these people have been dead for over 500 years in that gold box. Kinda trips me out.

Here’s a picture of some dude on a house. It’s in the middle of the city, but I have yet to figure it out, so that’s my job for this week. It just looked important, so here it is. Lol.

This was one of the best croissants I have ever had. It was only 1,50EU and it had fresh apricots in it along with apricot jam. Sooooo good and crispy, but soft. Seriously, it was money. The best thing is that they are all over the place in the city, I love it.

This was a great store, Arty. It’s kinda like DWR with a bit of crate and barrel with a bit of jewelry in it. I really liked it; I might go back and get a clock or something from there. Pretty nice stuff I have to say, but I really just took a picture of it so I would remember what it looks like and what street its on so I can go back. Lol.

What’s with the small glasses? Doesn’t anyone serve a real sized beer? I mean seriously.

Dinner tonight was at Pizzeria Vecchio. I had dinner with the same EA guy and another dude form Moog Montreal, but this time it was a little less fun to start, but I won’t get into that.

My pizza tonight was a chorizo pizza, with a tomato base. Evidently, all pizzas in general can be made with a crème base, or a tomato base and I chose the tomato base for this one. For some reason, they also really like egg on the pizza, so if you look closely (click to enlarge) at my pizza, you will see it has a raw egg on top, that eventually cooks into the pizza. it sounds really gross, but it was pretty good actually. I have to give it up to the French for being extremely gross, but making some good food at the same time. Kudos!

After dinner, there was a big rugby match between England and France in this 6 Nations tournament. Now, I don’t really know jack about rugby, but its really crazy. In fact, its even crazier in a French pub with French announcers. The pub/bar I watched the game at was pretty nuts. Full of French supporters, of course it was a French bar, but they were all drinking Stella. I swear this thing was like the super bowl. Also, to celebrate, the bartenders were bringing by boxes of beers, yes boxes. This guy would serve about 16 beers in plastic cups to a table and the guys would grab them, fill their pint glasses and then toss the cups to the side. I’m sure they could find a more efficient way to get refills, but it was amusing nonetheless.

So since the French were getting their ass kicked, and eventually lost, and my buddies bounced out on me early, I decided to bounce home early. I had just enough cash to get the car out of the garage (turns out my AMEX would have worked anyways), and was able to navigate through the small ass streets and get home so I could check out the rest of the game. France ended up losing, so no surprise there, although supposedly in the last few years, the games have been close.

Anyway…..I’ll leave you with a shot of me ripping out the parking lot. Haha…gotta love the front wheel drive!