Toulouse

Greetings to all.

We are in Toulouse, essentially to catch a flight to Dublin tomorrow. We had hoped to do some walking along the canals which cross southern france and pass through Toulouse, however Boronia has been quite sick, and I have been unwell. Consequently, we have only managed to explore the city itself, which is much larger than we had realised, and quite charming.

Yesterday we spent a couple of hours in the Musee des Augustines, a beautiful old monastery and church converted to a museum in the eighteenth century. It includes a large selection of roman sculptures, some more recent 18th century French sculptures, a terrific selection of stone argoyles which look even more dramatic up close, all located in a beatiful setting , the galleries surround a square cloister, now converted to a luscious vegetable garden. As well we sought out the contemporary art gallery which was located in an old abbatoirs revamped into a very avant garde space, and which was interesting, but limited in terms of the art on display. Made me realise how lucky we are in Canberra - a city of comparable size to Toulouse I suspect - to have a national gallery at our disposal.

Today, we explored more of the city, observed a very noisy strike parade of students and unionists - there is a national industrial campaign underway across France at the moment -  and undertook some important but time consuming tasks like attending to posting items to our grandchildren and so forth.

mike