France Day Neuf: Pee parade

Bonjour! I've returned from a vacation in France and now for the travel diary because my memory is terrible so I need to recap it all. This was a family vacation to catch the Euro Cup courtesy of my aunt and uncle, without them, this trip wouldn't have happened.
 
France Day Neuf

Les enfants terrible (I use this loosely since the average age of Nommie, Boo and me is 28.6 years making us squarely more adult than not) left early in the morning hit up Toulouse for breakfast. We ate at a small little joint called La Fiancee. It’s got a very small menu but it’s very delicious. I had sweet and savoury pancakes while Nommie and boo had eggs and bacon. Sadly, they were a little slammed and our drinks took a long time to arrive, and the coffee had a slight sour taste which was a little off-putting. Maybe it’s meant to be like that? Nonetheless, we enjoyed ourselves and the service was good with staff being really nice and friendly. This is probably the only place we ate at where the portions weren’t huge, but they were enough to fill us up till lunch.

Both have their phones out because of the free wifi. *SIGH* Millennials these days

My favourite breakfast dish - sweet and savoury combos

Sluuurrrrp

We strolled through cobblestone alleys visiting shoe shops so the boo could try on like 643261 pairs of shoes only to buy zero. Not that Nommie is any less picky – he wanted to buy a bag for travelling with but found a black and orange bag “too colourful”.  *eye roll* 

No photos of shoe shops but we did go through a covered market

Market king

WHAT IS THIS??? Someone tell me please!!!

Cassoulet had been a big hit so we found ourselves back in Restaurant Emile to rejoin the ‘adults’. My uncle pre-ordered some bouillabaisse as well as it’s also another specialty of theirs. This fish soup wasn’t really my thang so I had more cassoulet which I can confirm was as delicious as the first day we had it. 

All so happy to be eating Cassoulet again

After lunch, we walked about half an hour towards the Toulouse stadium to catch the Euro match of Sweden versus Italy.  The Toulouse stadium wasn’t much to look at, the chairs were pretty small and close together so it was a little squeezy. The vibe was pretty good though, with the Swedish fans out in full force, going wild even before the match started. All the Swedish fans were in the yellow jerseys and lots of them were in funny Viking costumes or headgear. Not sure why there weren’t that many Italians. Nonetheless, Italy dominated and won 1-0. Don’t worry Sweden, you’ll always have Ikea meatballs to drown your sorrows in. 

Arriving at the stadium

Swag swag swag

Beautiful day for some Italian footie destruction

To prove I was in Toulouse

Ikea?

Squeezy

We walked back to the centre of Toulouse to have tea at BB by Christian Constant. By ‘tea’ I mean coffee, hot chocolate, chocolate cake, profiteroles, rice pudding and burgers. This restaurant has some awesome interior design on its ceiling and is totally worth checking out because the service is good and the food is delicious. 

Guy on the left is like 'GASP! How dare you mock my glorious mane??'

Sinful chocolate cake

Rice pudding

Profiteroles...

...Doused in chocolatey deliciousness

After all this eating, we continued the greedy train by heading back to the chateau to eat homemade Japanese curry and rice (mmm Asian delights), before we started packing up because we’d be vacating the chateau in the morning. Byebye Chateau Marcoux! :'(

Key learnings:

• The stadium in Toulouse is actually really near to the centre of town – we only walked about 30 minutes (although we walked at a pretty fast pace).
• It’s tough to get a cab on match days – my uncle tried to get a cab so they wouldn’t have to walk but most cabs were already taken.
• It’s best to not bring anything to the football matches as they check all bags and do quite a thorough pat down. The women get a female attendant to pat them down so it’s a different (and usually faster) queue.
• You’re not allowed to bring things with batteries or anything too bomb-like (the boo had his portable phone charger confiscated at an earlier game) and people who had umbrellas had to surrender them at a check-in counter before going back through the pat-down-bag-check area.
• Men pee a lot. And not just in toilets. I had several sightings of men peeing in the bushes. I guess there’s also a lot of beer drinking which precipitates the peeing. 

Thanks for reading!