Was your husband happy that the Canal du Midi was the one that you guys chose? Would he have preferred one of the smaller, less crowded ones, or was this one the best option?
We split the work. Planning was sometimes stressful. But we made it more fun by doing dinners with the other couple in our town and viewing VRBO listings together. It took a lot of sessions … great excuse for plenty of wine and laughter. I did most of the research on Toulouse hotels and emailed links to “Canal Crew” to get feedback.
During the trip, one wife did most of the meal planning and cooking (except for when we ate out). But she helped with the ropes when her photographer hubby was taking photos or using the drone for aerial shots. The other wife and I did most of the dishes. One nice thing is that we were able to order our initial load of groceries - it was onboard when we arrived (with cold items in the fridge). Another nice thing was restaurants close to the canal. We ate out for 3 dinners and one lunch. Oh - I had a great guidebook (in addition to the detailed map book from Locaboat) with info an restaurant reviews at each stop . I also found a website with detailed info and made spreadsheet to flip it around for our direction of travel.
We liked Canal Du Midi in late Sept (and even then there was sometimes queue at the locks, especially around the lock keeper 1 hour broke). But we would have avoided it during summer crowds.
If any readers are lukewarm on the idea of renting a canal boat, I’d say lean toward not doing it. The trip won’t be fun if you’re not into the boat / ropes aspects.
My main point of posting again was to encourage Southern France in Sept/Oct timeframe. We definitely had Paris “on our list”, and as expected it was great (ditto Barcelona - 2nd visit). One of our group had visited Toulouse on business, and his fondness that made us decide to plan 2 nights there. It’s out the way for most travelers, but I’m betting there a lot of small-ish cities in Europe that are also friendly and walkable and pleasant in autumn.