MORE CHURCHES?!?!?!?!

I spent the day in Toulouse with my Art History professor, Bernard, and a handful of USAC students. Well, honestly, first I woke up at 6:00am after not having fallen asleep until 3:30am. That’s all thanks to the long nap I took yesterday. Anyway, I woke up, got out of bed, and took a shower. I didn’t drag a comb across my head because I don’t yet have enough hair, so no, it’s not a Beatles song. I knocked on Stephanie’s door and we were off.

Some travelers are poor but sexy. As for us, we're just sexy.

 I got some cash out of the ATM and Stephanie suddenly remembered that she left her necklace back at the dorm. So we had to head back, because apparently she feels uncomfortable without a necklace around her neck. By the time we got to the bus stop, we missed the bus. So now we had to walk all the way to the train station, which is only like a mile and a half away, but still… walking around downtown in the dark with no one around is kind of weird. Also, Stephanie was fretting that we wouldn’t make it to the train on time… she had never taken a train before and didn’t understand that we didn’t need to be there very early. At the train station we met up with some of the other students and with the sun rising, we embarked on our trip. Eight of us managed to nab one cabin in the train for ourselves, so the ride turned into 2½ hours of dirty jokes, gossip, and light-hearted insults.

Welcome to Toulous. To your right, you'll notice our Pizza Hut.

We finally pulled into Toulouse and immediately sighted our teacher. He was born in Toulouse, and his sister still lives there, so he drove into the city instead of riding the train with us. We started walking through town noticing some of the interesting modern architecture and statuary before arriving at the Place Capitolium, which was filled with pop-up tents for some type of local heritage celebration.

And also some weddings.

 Continuing on, we made a quick break for lunch before heading to L’Eglise Jacobin, the Jacobin monastery. While it’s a gothic-style abbey, the outside looks quite peculiar. It was very blocky and looked more like a Romanesque church than a gothic one, except that it had many large windows. Also, there were no flying buttresses, which are a staple of gothic architecture.

Like I said... weird looking.

 Once inside, all I could really muster was “what the heck?” Gothic cathedrals are known for having two rows of columns which border a central nave and create two open walkways. This abbey had one row of columns dividing it in half the long way. The main altar, instead of being at the far end of the abbey, was in the center of the abbey. But it did make for a very open, very bright church.

Still a bit weird.

 This abbey didn’t have much of note inside of it except for one item, the sarcophagus of St. Thomas Aquinas. “Who’s that?” you ask? Well I’ll tell you: he’s considered the greatest Christian philosopher of the middle ages. He’s the person who came closest to reconciling reason and faith, explaining that reason can only take a man so far, and beyond that is faith. He also played a large role in the importance of the Université de Paris and its flourishing reputation in the middle ages.

He must have been pretty short.

 This abbey also happened to have cloisters. While these cloisters were more complete than those at Bayonne, I thought they were aesthetically less pleasing. I don’t know what it is about brick, but it just doesn’t stand up to the impressiveness of stone.

At least their shrubberies are nice.

 These cloisters, as I said, were more complete than those at Bayonne. They included large and small scriptoriums (where monks would translate and/or copy books) as well as living quarters for the monks and abbot (which were not open to us).

A nice multi-level effect.

 After the monastery, we moved on to a hôtel, a house of one of the bourgeois families of Toulouse. It had a grand central courtyard with a gallery overlooking it. It also had a tower, for no other reason than to show off the families wealth and importance.

Because what better way to show off your importance than a large phallic symbol?

 We took a short break near the Office of Tourism (which happened to be situated in a medieval keep or donjon. At this point our teacher explained on a map the route we had taken through the city and the direction we would head next.

And because Bernard's awesome, he totally jumped the fence and climbed through the bushes to do it.

 We headed off to Basilique Saint-Sernin, a Romanesque church. This was one of the older style cathedrals, built in the style of the old Roman basilicas, as the name suggests. This means thick walls, small windows, and little light.

...and no pointy arches in the ceiling.

 Bernard scored us free access to the déambulatoire and crypts, where all of the religious reliquaries were held (reliquaries are decorated cases which hold religious relics, which could include the bodies or body parts of saints). I’ve never been in the crypt of a cathedral before, so this was another first for me. It was pretty cool, and creepy.

Lots of dead people down there.

 Among the reliquaries were the tomb of St. Saturnin, a shard of the “True Cross,” and chests holding items dedicated to several other saints. There were also stone-carvings of Christ, two apostles, and four angels which were impressive.

And Jesus is my homeboy, too.

 After this church, we left Bernard and spent about an hour wandering about town. The city reminded me a lot of Florence, not only for its brick buildings and terra-cotta roofs, but for the pedestrianized streets, large bustling crowds, and interesting small stores. We caught the train back to Pau and finally made it home. It was a long day.

And I ran out of good pictures of Toulouse, so here's Angie, Jennifer, and the back of Stephanie's head.

 I escorted Alejandra over to the pizza place and then had spaghetti with Stephanie and Elizabeth. Tomorrow I plan on sleeping in late, doing my laundry, and probably posting this. But for now, I’m going to go pass out.