Toulouse

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We arrived in Toulouse in the afternoon and caught the shuttle into the city center which dropped us off at a station about a 5 minute walk away from our hotel. There were a ton of people out at the street cafes and bars on the Friday and the whole inner city had a really nice laid back vibe. Right away, from airport to check in, we noticed how everyone is super friendly and helpful here.

After checking in, we walked down to the main train station to book our train out in a couple of days. We originally had planned on staying in Toulouse for two nights and then taking a morning train to Luxembourg but after some group efforts by the SNCF counter, we discovered that this would not be possible. Something about Sunday service to Paris and less trains and full (Frenglish translation), with that he booked us onto an overnight train for the next evening. Thankfully our awesome hotel in Toulouse was super understanding about the situation and after joking (or not?) about how “that’s France for you”, cancelled our next night reservation with no charge.

The next day we headed out to tackle the tourist sites in Toulouse. It was ridiculously hot outside; a museum that we had planned on visiting had to actually close their painting rooms due to the heat. The big thing to see in Toulouse is Le Capitole but when we got there, it was closed too! This was due to a number of marriage ceremonies that were taking place that day. Binnson wanted to go in anyway but as the wedding party came out and formed a bridge for the bride and groom coming down the stairs to the main entry, we decided against it.

There are a number of churches that were recommended to us to visit, so we decided we would move on and hope for the best with these. We stopped in at Basilique St. Sernin first, France’s largest Romanesque structure and a stop along the Camino de Santiago, it was a cool inside with many old hanging candle chandeliers and a crypt. Next we stopped in at the Chapelle Carmelites to see the fresco-ed ceiling and the bibliotheque right beside. From there we went to the Notre Dame du Taur which was nothing to write home about and then to the Couvent des Jacobins. The Couvent had very high ceilings and stained glass walls with a mirror placed at the bottom of one of the large pillars which gave me some good photo ops.

There are two rivers that run through Toulouse and we walked down to the nearby Garone River to see the Dome de la Grave and a ferris wheel across the way from Pont Neuf. We made a stop into the Notre Dame de la Daurade, which was the most quiet church we have ever stepped into, no one was even whispering and well Binnson and I are not the quietest people, we tried not to make a scene but even the sound of my camera shutter echoed throughout the building and when Binnson sat down on an old bench with the loudest creaking sound ever, I burst out laughing and we made our way to the exit.

Finally we visited the last church on our list, the Cathedrale St. Etienne, where we did have to attend a wedding to get in. We walked around with a couple other tourists in the back while the wedding finished, trying to not get in any background photos. Afterwards, we went for a walk past the Monument aux Morts to the Grand Rond which is basically a garden with a fountain with some statues and took a break here. The heat was starting to get to us and with no other place to go, we headed to a supermarket for AC and to buy some snacks. We made one more walk to the Capitole to see if we could get in if the weddings were finished but it had closed for the evening, so with that we grabbed our bags and headed to wait for our train to Paris.

The only downside of Toulouse is that there seems to be a lot of young people (homeless?) on the streets collecting change, and they all have big dogs and group together outside of common places, especially the main train station. Otherwise, this was a really nice city!

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Photos

Couvent des Jacobins
Fun with mirrors

Just some superhero's walking down the street
Saw the same thing in Barcelona... strange?