Exploring Toulouse: no cycling

October 26, 2009

Weather: sunny and warm

We woke up early and went downstairs to the breakfast room, where most of the other guests looked like business people. Toulouse is the fourth largest city in France and the centre of the European aerospace industry, including the headquarters of the Airbus company, so we expected it to be much more bustling than the small historic towns of the Loire.

After breakfast we followed one of the hotel's suggested walking tours past the major sights and along the Garonne river. The city is often referred to as the Ville Rose (pink city) because of the small pink bricks with which many of the houses and important buildings have been constructed. These bricks are often combined with the local white stone to create a decorative effect. Most of the buildings date from the 16th or 19th century, but the Basilica of Saint Sernin is much older, built in about 1100.

Saint-Sernin basilica, the largest romanesque church in Europe dates from the early 1100s.

Paving stones worn flat by centuries of foot traffic at one of the entrances to the basilica.

Staring at the world for most of a thousand years.

Many of the street signs were in both French and Occitan, an archaic language related to Catalan. The downtown was extremely crowded with pedestrians as well as cars (like Robson Street in Vancouver). The weather was beautifully warm, and for lunch we found a sandwich shop on a side street with outdoor tables where we could bask in the sunshine. It was quite a contrast to the chilly temperatures in Paris and the Loire and definitely felt like we were in the south of France!

Le pont neuf (new bridge) in Toulouse is actually quite old, having been finished in 1632.

Along the Canal du Midi near the centre of Toulouse.

After a rest in our room, we explored more of the city and perused dinner menus posted outside restaurants. We found a nice restaurant a few blocks away from the hotel and had a good dinner: tapenade on toast for starters, scallops carpaccio in a salad, then duck for the main course, followed by tarte aux pommes for Al and profiteroles for Eva. We enjoyed the quiet ambience compared to yesterday evening.

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