In Montauban

A nice loll today, no need to be down for breakfast until 9.30. It was a good spread, toast, ham, cheese, 6 different jams, tea, coffee, hot chocolate, orange juice, fruit, scrambled eggs, cake. All very delicious and no need for lunch today! Afterwards we went back up to the room, rang home again, did some blogging and indexing of photo's. We had to change rooms so we just mucked about in the room and relaxed until midday when the room was ready.


After changing rooms we followed a tourist route that we had gotten from the tourist info office. It had a path and a description of buildings along the way, and in English. There were quite a few people doing the same thing and we talked to a Polish women who is doing it, she was a bit disappointed with the churches. We visited the botanic gardens where we saw otters and also visited the, just about to close, Saturday markets. A bit of a shame about the market, the food looked good. After a while we felt it was time for a snack so we got a couple of cakes which we shared in our room, delicious. Then it was back to wandering around the town. We visited Notre Dame, there was about to be a wedding, the town square where we were last night, and past some old convents and another church, Saint Jacques, complete with cannon ball damage from the 17th century.


In due course we came to the Ingres Museum. Ingres was a local 19th century artist who donated a lot of stuff, including his own art work, to the local museum. There was a special exhibition where other artists had made artwork based on his art, so they had his original plus several other pieces by other artists. I have to admit I didn't know Ingres (nor did Paul) but he was obviously well known as there were quite a few Picasso's there and a couple of Salvadore Dali's as well. Underneath the museum there was an archaeological museum with a Roman and medieval pieces. The lower parts of the museum are themselves are archaeological site, the bottom floors were built during an English occupation. I think it was in the 15th century.

Feeling totally exhausted we went back to the hotel to rest until dinner time. After a pleasant relax we went out at about 8 pm, no wonder I was feeling hungry. We went to a terrace restaurant that Paul had chosen yesterday. We got a menu with both a buffet entree and a buffet dessert! The entree was very tasty, like many buffets it didn't look to promising but the food was good. For the main I had a steak with a very nice selection of vegetables. The dessert buffet was quite extensive and I had three desserts, a chocolate mouse, a crème caramel and a sticky thing a bit like a baklava that had been rolled up. All very nice. All of this was washed down by a nice half litre carafe of red :)