Arrived in Toulouse!

After my first full day in Toulouse, things are going pretty well. I bought a bicycle today (Thursday), and will take delivery Saturday morning. This gives me a chance to take the train out to Carcassonne tomorrow, which is something I wanted to do by train anyway - the bike path to Carcassonne isn't in very good shape. The train there is about an hour, so it makes a wonderful day trip.

Oh - I got my cellphone set up. If you call my US number (with the 310 area code), you'll get a message giving my French number. It's €5/month for 2 GB of data and unlimited calling and texts. It's just a bit of a hassle to set up, but I knew to have a scan of my passport to submit when I register.

Bicycle

I stumbled across a great little bike shop near where I'm staying: La Bicyclette Verte. More about that later, when I take delivery, but I got a perfectly wonderful bike for €380.

Théâtre

I reserved a place for a comedy theater just down the street, for Saturday! Les 3T Café-Théâtre, where I'll see “Dear, let's tell eachother everything,” about a couple that decides to tell eachother the complete truth. The theatre seemed to have a really nice vibe when I walked by it; I'll see how much of the play I understand!

Playing the Tourist

After getting myself together with the bicycle, I did a bit of walking. Toulouse seems like a nice city! Here are some random pictures of a little stroll, but I haven't really seen anything yet.

Actually, I got a bit discouraged with all the walking today. But then, a Facebook interaction reminded me that part of the reason I'm doing this is that it forces me to get out and walk, in addition to a bunch of bicycling. In that sense, it's a bit of physical therapy - my left foot still gets tired, but I can walk for hours now without a foot brace. Part of the reason for me to be here is to get completely over any hesitation to do a bunch of walking, by giving me a really good reason to want to.

Algeria wins!

Apparenltly, Algeria won some sort of soccer football match. The semi-final of the men's World Cup? Of course, America already won the more important women's World Cup. But that didn't stop pretty much everybody with an Algerian flag from coming out on the street to celebrate tonight.