Sue and Mark Come to Visit!

Guys, I've been a bad blogger. I'm sorry I've gotten so behind in my blog posts. I decided to take an online Kindergarten teaching course and it really put my blogging to the back burner. I know you've all been waiting anxiously by your computers hitting the refresh button constantly in the hopes to find a new blog post. Well you're in luck because today is the day!  I have lots to update you on, but I'll start with when my sister Susan and her husband Mark came to visit at the beginning of October.

Sue and Mark had a lovely vacation in Paris for a week and then decided to train it on over to visit us here in Toulouse. It was a tight squeeze in our tiny little apartment with four adults for a week, but we managed to avoid killing each other and had a really good time. We went on a few weekend trips, toured Toulouse, had an excuse to eat 3 course French meals, and even got to spend Canadian Thanksgiving together.  The first weekend they were here we took the opportunity to explore some of the surrounding areas of Toulouse. On Saturday we took the train to the beautiful town of Albi. Our friends here in Toulouse had been before and kept telling us we had to go see it and they were right. Albi is a beautiful and charming little town. We walked around all day and saw some lovely sights.

We found this beautiful courtyard garden in the middle of a church

Palais de la Berbie, now the Museum of Toulouse-Lautrec (the famous painter, you might recognize some of his Moulin Rouge Posters)

Beautiful bridges

You can't tell we're related at all.....

Beautiful cathedral

Gorgeous Albi

 We stopped for lunch midway through our tour of Albi at a nice restaurant. Dave and I both ordered steak and we got this.

 While this was indeed delicious, it was not steak. The meat was white and we're pretty sure it was pork. When we asked the waiter about it he insisted it was indeed steak. So, apparently not only is Albi a beautiful city but they also are home to the only cow/pig hybrid in the world. It was the best stork I had ever had.

We had a great day at Albi. The next day we headed to the fortified medieval town of Carcassonne. Some of you may know of the board game Carcassonne, well this is the city it's based on. Carcassonne is a really really cool place with a lot of history. We had a lot of fun touring the city and the castle on our day there. Here are a few pictures.

Carcassonne from a distance

Bridge entering Carcassonne

Dave and I at the entrance to the city

 On Monday, it was Canadian Thanksgiving. In France, they don't celebrate Thanksgiving and as you know I don't have an oven (in fact I only have a two element stove top), but I was determined to have a Thanksgiving celebration. During the day I toured Sue and Mark around Toulouse. We worked up our Thanksgiving appetite and I got to work cooking when we got home. It proved a bit time consuming, but in the end we managed to pull it off. We made potatoes, carrots, brocolli, stove top stuffing from Canada (courtesy of Susan), gravy, and we bought a pre-made chicken at the grocery store. We even had cranberry sauce that Susan brought from home, since they don't have that here in France. It was a fight getting into the sauce since we don't own a can opener because most of the cans here come with pull tabs. But eventually Susan MacGyvered her way into it and we enjoyed it with our turkey. It was a feast and it was delicious.

YUM!

Dessert (and we bought this at the grocery store, sometimes I love France)

Sue, Mark, and Dave enjoying our feast

Sue and Mark left us for a few days to go on a trip to Cahor and the surrounding regions. When they returned they treated us to a wonderful meal at Maison George. The food was delicious and the restaurant had a really cool atmosphere with books and other interesting things on shelves surrounding the tables. It really was like eating in someones home, only fancier haha. Unfortunately we were too busy eating to get any pictures of the restaurant, but we did manage to snap a few photos of our food before we devoured it. It was delicious and a wonderful last night with Sue and Mark.

Delicious caesar salad with all sorts of yummy bits of goodness

Dave's lamb was melt in your mouth good

My chicken. Stuffed with olive tapenade and covered in a cream sauce. Yum!

The next day Sue and Mark were off. We had a great visit and we were glad they were able to stop by during their trip to France.

Until next time...

Au Revoir

Lest We Forget

While in Munich, we had the chance to visit the first concentration camp opened in Germany called Dachau concentration camp. It's hard to describe standing on the grounds of a place that caused so much suffering and took so many lives. It was very moving. With Remembrance Day coming up I thought I would share a few of the pictures that we took. I recommend that if you ever get the chance you visit a concentration camp.  It is hard to wrap your mind around all the pain that was endured, but it is important to remember what went on at these camps. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

The door to the camp, "Work Sets You Free"

Roll call area. This happened daily, took hours or all day, and prisoners weren't allowed to move. Everyone had to be accounted for, which meant dragging out bodies of bunk mates who had passed away in the evening.

This is a bunk room. Each single bed would have to fit 5 to 6 people. Sometimes they would get so crowded that people would get smothered and die in their sleep.

Disrobing room. Victims would remove and leave clothes in this room before entering the gas chamber disguised as a "shower".  Clothing was brought to the disinfecting chamber before the next group was brought in.

This is where the guards would put the poisonous gas (zyklon-b) for the gas chambers. 

This is the gas chamber. Victims were told they were going to take a "shower" and the room even had fake shower spouts in it. During a 15 to 20 minute period up to 150 people could be suffocated in the gas chambers. 

Death chamber, where the dead were brought before they were cremated.

crematorium

A picture from liberation day. If you look closely you can see the bad shape that a lot of the prisoners were in. The man on the bottom right corner with the "X" on this back, who looks like an old man, is only in his 20s. He is so malnourished that his spinal cord is visible at the back of his neck. Our tour guide did not know how this man could still be alive, let alone standing.