Bill and I go to the open air market each Saturday not just to get the week’s supply of fresh fruit and vegetables but because it’s a lively social event and one that’s observed in thousands of towns all over France. We’ve even picked up supplies at neighborhood markets in Paris when we’ve been there on vacation and rented apartments with kitchens. It’s such a popular event that it was on our list of must-haves when we were searching for a place to live and there’s a website (link below) devoted to market days and locations. It was there that we looked for the information to decide on which day to make a visit to Rodez while we were staying in Toulouse and could make easy one-train day trips from there.

To promote tourism in our part of the south of France, the regional government of Occitanie invited cities with “remarkable architectural and/or natural heritage or perennial cultural events” to join in a 5-year program called Grands Sites Occitanie. Forty “majestic, authentic, wild or legendary” places were chosen, naturally one of which was Carcassonne given its status as the best preserved medieval walled city in Europe. Many of the 40 sites are accessible by a direct train from Toulouse so we decided to stay a few nights there to avoid making connections. For our first day trip we chose Montauban which like Toulouse is nicknamed a “pink city” because of the proliferation of buildings made from bricks of that color. But why?