Working Lunch

We have two sets of guests this weekend - so a full house, if you like. Both seem lovely but both are very different, which I guess, is part of the thrill of throwing people together into the mix as we do. We had a lively and funny get-together over cocktails and canapes on Friday evening and I am looking forward to having dinner with them all tomorrow.

My working of the relationship with the restaurant 'La Roulotte' seems to have paid off. We sent some guests down there on Friday night and they were treated like kings and had a fabulous evening (their words). We sent our other guests there this evening and hopefully they had a similar experience.

Then, today, in the name of more 'research', we had lunch at 'Le Saint Jean", which is up in the Cite. We had been meaning to check out some more of the restaurants up there for a while - and with the weather so beautiful this weekend, it was the perfect opportunity.

You may think that having lunch in the name of guest research isn't working at all - well, it is working, but a very very pleasant way of doing so.

The restaurant had been recommended by Lesa and it proved to be an excellent recommendation. It is situated in a quiet side street away from the main tourist thoroughfares, but there were still enough people there to create a good ambience and it is positioned right next to the Chateau Comtal, the inner sanctum of the Cite and former home of the Counts of Toulouse, giving a beatiful backdrop of moat and walls and turrets - especially when topped with a cloudless azure sky as it was today.

As ever the Cite was packed with tourists waving cameras and children waving plastic swords and hatchets - a combination that is considerably more dangerous to life, limb and sanity than the original inhabitants of the Cite, 1000 years ago, probably were.

We beat a hasty retreat back to the relative calm of the Bastide town, although today, it too was also in a party mood - probably due to the sunshine and market day and the imminent start of the French bank holiday season. The main square was packed with people, watching and being watched by each other whilst slowly baking in the first sustained sunshine of the year - let's hope it sticks around.