Our day starts with rain! We’re not equipped to deal with this so ignore it and walk into town anyway. It’s not too heavy and within ten minutes we are arriving once again at the bishop’s palace and buying tickets for the Toulouse-Lautrec museum.
We start with his simple horse works, he was a scholar of two famous painters who specialised in animals, before he digressed into the human kind. In particular he preferred ladies of the night, not just for illicit pleasure, he genuinely saw their flawed lives as attractive for study, although matters of the flesh may have been studied in more detail later.
His involvement in the Moulin Rouge was significant, and his prolific work on posters certainly set the tone of the time, with some 300+ classic designs becoming timeless masterpieces even today’s designers aspire to.
The museum explores all this and more – his various fixations are showcased with sympathy, yet also beautifully highlight the 800 year old palace with its incredible rooms and various restoration projects over the many hundreds of years. Its no wonder Albi is a World Heritage site!
We return to our hotel, grumpy that for second day running our room isn’t serviced, quickly change and head off cross-country to Domain de la Monasterié once again to rejoin the party animals.
We are treated to a BBQ this time, and spend the afternoon chatting with family and friends, sharing dodgy photos from decades ago, as only ancient relatives can do at these gatherings. In particular one from our Cawthorne house at Mark’s 40th some 23 years ago does the rounds, much to Emily’s, Alex’s and Tom’s abject horror!
The afternoon is a wonderful success and we regretfully make our escape before we’re roped into any more jobs, having done our fair share throughout the afternoon.
We spend an hour lazing in our room before showering and dressing for dinner, walking up into town to find a suitable place. The one suggested turns out to be closed on Sundays, as are most pavement restaurants, so we walk back to La Pontié which we found very acceptable two nights ago, and settle in here. We observe that a lot of the wedding party are also here, so clearly it’s the “in place” to be.
We enjoy gravadlax, mozzarella and heirloom tomato salad, escalope du veau, and entrecôte frîtes – all of which are fabulous. It’s such fun to be talking entirely French for a change!
