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Le
Tarn
"Pays Passion"
Welcome to the sunny south of France.
The Tarn is a
department of France located near the Mediterranean and the Spanish
border, and is a forty-five minute drive from Toulouse, (France's 4th city, home
of the aerospatial industry, dozens of universities,
etc.).
Why would you want to visit the Tarn?
It is venerable and beautiful
The largest brick building
in the world, built in the 12th century (the Cathedrale Saint-Cécile,), is
located here in Albi. Aside from being big, it's
one of the most beautiful examples of midi-gothic architecture in
France.
It's where you'll find one of the
best wineyards in France, the Gaillacois, in constant production for over
a thousand years.
Henri Toulouse-Lautrec slept here. He was also born here, painted
here, and left the largest single
mass of his works here (in the the
Toulous
e-Lautrec Museum)
If you like
midaeval villages perched on mountaintops, the kind that make your head
spin by simple looking and get you wondering - how'd they do that - you
really should see Cordes-sur-Ciel and drive
around the Bastides.
If you've heard, in your travels, that there are good places to eat
in France, and you like that sort of thing, well, you really should drop
by for dinner sometime.
People here drink lots of wine, absorb cholesterol (foie gras,
fritons, patés and all that good stuff that healthy people just
shouldn't eat), smoke Gauloises like, well smoke Gauloises,
and...
...live 6.7 years longer, on
average, than everyone else in Western countries.
It's called the French
Paradox. I don't understand it either, but it has something to do
with tannin in red wine and antioxydant effects.
And What about the Food?
If, like so many visitors to the south of France, you're
looking forward to the meals you're going to have here, you won't be
disappointed. The Tarn is one of the great gastronomic regions of France,
situated near the southern reach of the famous Perigord/Aveyron/Tarn/Aude
'dining trail'.
The cuisine of the Southwest is known for its local specialities
elaborated from local products. The renown of this 'terroir local' is
founded on (to name but a few) goose and duck products (notably, foie
gras and maigrets), local cheeses fabricated at the farm (but that
shouldn't be taken as a reason to ignore the cheeses of Roquefort,
fabricated a few kilometers to the east of here), the local fruit and
vegetable production, and the wines of Gaillac.
If you are about to dine out for the first time in France, here are a few
useful bits of information:
- The word for MENU in French is 'la carte'.
- Taxes and tips are always included in the listed price on the menu,
uh, I mean, the carte.
- Almost all restaurants propose a complete meal, or several
alternative complete meals, at a fixed price in the main section of their
menu. Each of these is called a 'Menu', as in 'the Menu at 150 francs'.
Individual
hors d'oeuvres, main dishes, desserts, etc, are located in the 'à
la carte' section.
- on the carte, 'compris' means that a service is included in the price
(ie, 'vin compris'). 'en sus' means it is an extra (ie, 'vin en sus')
- the 'no smoking' signs in restaurants in France are not always
respected. Some visitors take this as a massive affront (and lets it ruin
their meal); others figure that they're not in Kansas anymore, and the
food is so-o-o good...
The Tarn and the Internet
Internet Service Providers:
I-Link, 17 rue Gustave Eiffel, 81000 Albi
e-mail: info@ilink.fr
WWW: http://www.ilink.fr
I-Link offers temporary Internet accounts for visitors.
Tourism
The Official Site of the City of
Albi
Education
Ecole des Mines d'Albi
The fifth engineering school of France
University Paul Sabatier
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'Internet in the land of
Cocagne'