other random sights on the streets of Toulouse

I mentioned in the previous post the language of occitan, which was spoken in this region in the southwest of France. From what I understand it's called occitan (or langue d'oc) because the word for "yes" was "óc", while the old French spoken in northern France used "oil" (there should be an umlaut or tréma on the i, but I can't get blogger to cooperate with my keyboard settings), which turned into "oui". Around the old part of Toulouse many of the street names are posted in both French and Occitan. Here are a couple of examples (note again the slabs of pink stone in this building - they're not bricks):
And here is another one, though this building is brick. Here you can see the links to Spanish and Latin as well:
And finally, this picture is really silly, but I thought it was pretty neat. On some of the busier pedestrian streets I notices that there were these posts separating the two lanes of traffic on either side of a central median with kiosks selling bread and sandwiches and tabacco. I thought it odd that the put posts between the lanes, but I thought it was just to keep people from changing lanes and killing pedestrians in the process. But then I was there around rush hour, and saw that one of the lanes was blocked off entirely by posts at either end that rose up out of the pavement. At other times of the day they were completely flush with the surface of the road, but at some appointed hour they rose up to close the lane off. They also had flashing red light at the top (shown illuminated here) to warn unwary drivers.