The best-laid plans …

I'm sidelined by another man-cold, so today's column won't be up to my usual standards. Ah-choo!

Pierre Paul Riquet, the driving force behind the creation of France’s famed Canal du Midi, was sympathetic when he heard I had come down with a man-cold. “Take it easy, bro, you can write about my museum in a few days.”

I had hoped that I’d be spending this week wrapping up my checklist of sites to see in Toulouse, but a cold has unfortunately sidelined me for a few days. On Sunday, I finally got to see the Montagne Noire site, where a large reservoir, the biggest project of its kind at the time, made the whole Canal du Midi project possible.

The Saint-Ferréol reservoir and dam in the town of Revel ensures that the low-lying Canal du Midi maintains proper water levels during both dry seasons and droughts.

And on Tuesday I took a 3-hour guided walking tour of the city with a host whose admitted obsession with medieval history gave me insights I’m sure I wouldn’t have found anywhere else.

The Place de la Capitole is the heart of historic Toulouse. It is deceptively quiet on a Tuesday morning, but it usually thrumming with activity.

Harry is the very animated and passionate host of a three-hour walking tour of Toulouse.

But the cold weather here this week put a bit of a damper on my exploration and I’ve been nursing a man-cold since getting back from an ex-pat MeetUp event Tuesday night.

So you’ll have to forgive me if today’s post is much shorter than usual. I’ve managed to post for 37 weeks straight, for a total of 57 columns in all, but today you will have to settle for a few snapshots, a video and a tease to my next great adventure: performing stand-up comedy on a Toulouse stage next Monday.

These columns usually take a lot of time and energy to produce. Narrowing down my subjects and picking the right photos and videos is just the start, then I write the draft and research and fact-check whatever I’ve written. I unfortunately don’t have that energy today, so I hope this tides you over.

And now it’s back to bed for me.