Day 18 - Friday, February 14 - We take the train from Toulouse to Montpellier, eat lunch at a cafe at the Place du Comedie, and settle back in to our little castle apartment. Sunny 56°F (13°C)

Our last moments in Toulouse! On our walk to the Matabiau train station, we once again saw French soldiers patrolling, with their machine guns in hand. We've seen these guys in every city we've been to, strolling around in groups of a half dozen or so, and they are ignored by everyone. Given the terrorist attacks, I guess it's comforting to have this presence in public places? Can't imagine it in the US.

We took a last snap at the Toulouse sign:

Kind of sad to be leaving Toulouse - we really loved being in this city, and plan to spend more time here in the future. Today is a Friday, so the 10:42am train was the busiest we'd seen it yet, and the platform was packed!

It's also Valentines Day, and only later did I realize I caught some smoochers photo-bombing this pic of Jamil as the train to Montpellier rolled in.

It's when the train is especially busy that we appreciate having assigned seats; though about half the time, someone has been sitting in our spots. We've never had an issue with those folks re-locating, however, so it hasn't been a problem. In addition, I would say that the train conductors (ticket-checkers? not sure the correct phrasing here) check tickets about 80% of the time. So most train trips we've taken, our tickets have been checked. One time, they also requested ID, and I almost pulled out my driver's license, until I realized that most folks we met here don't really know where Oregon is, and so out came the passports. Thankfully, they don't usually seem to require ID.

The tickets are all digital, and it's a simple matter to pull them up on our phones for the conductors to scan. It's a really efficient process!

Got this snap of a passing train as we pulled out of the station for the two hour ride to Montpellier:

Unfortunately, many of the train windows are quite filthy, which makes taking pictures out the windows tricky. I did manage to capture this river, which I believe is the Garonne:

You may have noticed in the previous outdoor pics that the weather was pretty cloudy. When we arrived in Montpellier at 12:54pm however, the sun was shining bright!

We hoofed it to our apartment (about 1km from Montpellier Saint-Roch train station), ditched our stuff, and headed back to the Place de la Comédie for some lunch!

We checked out a few places on some narrow side streets, but they were all in the shade and seemed busy and cold. When we got to the square, it was a whole other scene. The sun was shining, and the cafes lining the square were doing a bustling business, despite it almost being that time in the afternoon where everything shuts.

We managed to score a table at Café Marcel and what a day! It was lovely to sit in the sun and have a leisurely lunch.

Just the kind of relaxing and recharging we needed!

Behind us, the building was under construction; but of course, this is France, so the workers were all on a break!

We both ordered the special, which consisted of Croque Monsieur (basically, a toasted ham sandwich with cheese), a salad, a wine or beer (we chose beer), and a desert. Cafe Marcel speciallizes in glace (ice cream) and had a menu a mile long and a kilometer wide; after much deliberation, Jamil had the pistachio, and I chose speculoos (which is like graham cracker flavor).

Just as we were finishing, the construction work began again, and it started to get noisy, but our timing was bang on, and it was time to head back to home base! Before we could rest, we made a stop at the Monoprix for the remaining week in Montpellier. An amazing Valentines day!