Today, on our last day in Toulouse, we finally discovered the medieval old town. While the Paris-like buildings have been pulled down, some of the older structures are still standing.

Toulouse is cut in half by a river. One side is bulbous, the other is shaped like a backwards C. The bulbous side is ugly, but it is the part that was defended by an ancient Roman wall. Not much remains of that other than in the museums. The C part is the newer, less defensible side, and that’s where the old town lies.

I like visiting old churches—they were the only sanctioned institutions that supported art for millennia. My men hate it! So we go a lot.

We could see from inside and out how these building evolved over many generations. Amazing! And the Vatican should spend more money on their maintenance, in my humble opinion.

Old building are still mixed with newer—old buildings do fall down.

They do like eating, however.

There were no cheese shops in Toulouse—none that we found anyway, and we’ve walked over twenty miles of streets so far. But there are murals. And what city would be complete without a clown store?

We have a tradition that anyone can call “Bench” at any point.

After endless walking about, we went to an all-you-can-eat fois gras dinner at L’Os à Moëlle.

Despite plenty of bragging about how much will be consumed, we couldn’t even finish the one serving between the four of us. Nick had to go back to the apartment early to sleep it off.

So this is it for Toulouse for now. We are packing, picking up our rental car, and driving south and east to our next destination.