Day 14 - Monday, February 10 - We return to Toulouse because of weather. Montpellier: Cloudy 55°F (12°C); Toulouse: Sunny 57°F (14°C)

After the full day of cold and rain on Saturday, and considering the weather forecast for Montpellier has three more cold and rainy days this week, we decided to return to Toulouse. The weather there is forecast to be five degrees warmer and no rain; plus, there were a few more sites we wanted to see and spots we wanted to explore. Yes, it meant renting an additional place on top of the one here in Montpellier, but what the heck.

After spending Sunday evening arranging the train tickets and booking a new place, we packed up a subset of our things and headed back to the Montpellier Saint-Roch train station:

We were excited to be heading back to Toulouse, but that didn't stop us from appreciating the inside of the Montpellier station. Reminded me a bit of PDX

Every station we've been to so far has many of these screens, listing the train departures (Departs), arrivals (Arrivées) and their platforms (Voie) and it's been so easy to navigate. Our train is listed as "Bordeaux Saint-Jean" departing at 11h01.

Once they announced the Voie (platform) on the screen, we headed to the platform to wait for the train's arrival. You have to triple check that you're going to the correct platform for your train. Although there are screens to check with on the platform, if you got the track wrong, there might be little time to bail out as the trains are always on time, board and leave in 1-2 minutes and often don't have an indication of their destination on the train. You get used to this pretty quickly though.

It's a bit tough to see, but on the screen in the pic below, at the bottom there's a diagram of the train showing which section of the platform (indicated with letters) the cars of the train (indicated with numbers) will be adjacent to, so you can position yourself along the platform where your car or "coach" will be situated. This is really useful! Our car was located between W and X. It's nice not to have to run down the platform to your coach, or have to board a different car and navigate through the train to find your seat!

Once we arrived back in Toulouse, we enjoyed the walk to our new apartment, on Rue Sainte-Ursule. I saw this analog 24-hour public clock:

Up close you can see the hands point to a 24 numbers around the rim. Not quite sure how to read that!

Toulouse is quite a diverse city. Jamil spotted this Asian shop:

Which reminded us of lèche-vitrine name for window-shopping in french, which literally translates to "window-licking". I think it's because there are so many patisseries and boulangeries with delicious-looking offerings situated seemingly on every block.

We passed by this library, and I couldn't help but feel like it also seems grand and imposing, to match many of the historic buildings. Looks like it's very closed at the moment.

Finally we arrived at our apartment, located on a busy street right in the heart of things. It has a cute little Juliette balcony:

And a tiny kitchen area:

But it has enough space to work on the blog, which we got right busy at:

Along with some charcuterie, of course!

Happy to be back in Toulouse!