FrenchKate

Jan 31: Angels here and angels there

We spotted these angels during our first few months in Toulouse in 2017.

The Musee des Augustins in Toulouse has some remarkable church art: statues, capitals and other relicts from churches destroyed in the 19th century. 

The first statue--Angel Gabriel notifying Mary at the Annunciation--came from Saint Sernin and dates to the 12th century.

The second statue--the angel playing an organ--is tiny, just a little over 12 inches tall. This delicate limestone piece dates to 1400 and retains its polychrome.

The third angel is not from Toulouse. This angel is found at the foot of the crucified Christ in a side chapel in the Cathedral of Saint Cecilia in Albi, that vast brick fortress with the astonishing, opulent Renaissance interior. 

  

Jan 30: Bruce

Bruce guarded the entrance to a men's clothing shop that I passed daily, and I thought he was the best dog. I wondered what breed he was, and the owner was delighted to tell me, but I don't know French names for most dog breeds, and he didn't know the English names so his heritage remains a mystery, Some kind of terrier, I think, but a real cutie, in any case.

Jan 28: Lunch break

A quick post here as I try to work my way back to a daily schedule. 

Something I find very appealing about the French is how seriously they take mealtimes: an important time for conviviality, social bonding and nourishment.

Tables and chairs are found on streets, in gardens, or, in one image here, in the shade of an old church bay, and places are set. Voila!

Going through my photos tonight, I came across these various examples. I am sure, if I spent more time reviewing photos, I would find many, many more examples.

 

Jan 27: The dining room

We used the second large room as a dining room. To give you an idea of the size of the room, the red rug is 9'x12'  

We had a violin and a guitar in the corner, and it was such a pleasant room.

Jan 26: Interiors: the living room

Our apartment had five rooms--three bedrooms, and two large rooms, perhaps 20' x 20--as well as an entry foyer, a kitchen and two bathrooms.  We used one of the large rooms for a sitting room and the other for a dining room.  It was very comfortable space for a couple, and I found it magical to live in a space like this. I took surprisingly few photos, however. But here are views of the four corners of the living room.

1. 1. Me in the living room on the day we rented the apartment in 2006. Here the old Renaissance chimney piece is visible. We used it as a bookshelf. The door to the bedrooms is just to the right of the chimneypiece. The ceilings are ten feet high.
2. 
   2. Tom sitting in the living room, the characteristic Toulousain wall of brick behind him.

3. Another view of the living room shortly before the movers arrived in September.

4. Looking from the living room to the dining room as the movers packed everything up in September, 2007.

 

 

Jan 25, 2022: How wide was rue Tripiére?

Rue Tripiére dates at least to the 15th century, and it typifies the narrow streets of the medieval town. These were streets built for pedestrians.

Our apartment came with a parking space that opened onto rue Tripiére. Each morning my husband would back his car--roughly 15 feet from bumper to bumper--out onto rue Tripiére, and you can see how tight the geometry was. It was stressful enough that eventually, we arranged to have a parking space in the place du Capitol parking ramp, about half a kilometer away. A longer walk, much, much easier maneuvering in and out...and much less stress.

Jan 24, 2022: Time passes

It has now been two years since my husband and I visited France, thank you, covid-19...and with omicron tearing up all we have gained so far, who knows when we will get back? Time passes.

We first visited Toulouse in the summer of 2006, and I did my first FrenchKate post in mid-January, 2007, shortly after moving there. I have posted 3224 times in the fifteen years since...though not since Dec 5, 2021, nearly two months ago.

It is a funny thing. I have had nothing but time during the ebb and flow of the pandemic, and yet, my frequency for posting on FrenchKate has dropped off. It is a strange time.

So, let me begin again...Here are some views of our apartment at 1 rue Tripiére in the hypercentre of Toulouse, the oldest part of town. This street appears in the earliest maps of Toulouse; its name --which dates to least the 15th century--originated because butchers--both cattle and goat--and sausage makers had shops here. The building itself dates to the sixteenth century. In 1549--the earliest record--one Pierre Lissery, bourgeois, lived there. In 1582, a M. François Delpech, knight, lived there.  Now, of course, it has been divided up into apartments. 

I am curious about M. Delpech because around that time, around 1582, in the midst of the religious wars, a father and son named Delpech massacred a group of protestants. The name was prominent in Toulouse. Was it the same family?

In any case, first, that very old door is the front entrance

Second, the view from the upstairs window

Third, the twisty stairs that led to our apartment on the second floor.

Last, a recent google street view of 1 rue Tripiére, off-white with blue shutters. The different floors are separated by red parallel stripes. Our apartment was on the second floor, above the shops on ground level and the taller windows on the first floor. The style is influenced by the Renaissance--the windows are regular, the different levels, divided by parallel bands, observe the classical proportions described by Serlio.