February Travels: Toulouse, France

Stop number 3 on our French road trip was Toulouse, which turned out to be one of my favorite cities that I've visited in France! Here's the map once again so you can see the little trip we took from Toulon to Montpellier to Carcassonne and to Toulouse.

As you can see on the map, Toulouse is in the southwest

It is a huge college town with tons of restaurants and museums and just a lot of young people. The architecture is also my favorite. It is called la ville rose because a huge majority of the buildings are made of brick (a pinky-red color) and often have blue shutters. It makes for a really cool aesthetic. The only downside was that it was raining the entire time we were there. We arrived around 1 pm from Carcassonne and settled into the AirBnb, which was decent but missing toilet paper (a somewhat essential thing) and one of us had to sleep on a blow-up mattress which deflated throughout the evening. But it was right in the heart of the city and had TV so that was a plus.

Also here are some remaining pictures from Carcassonne:

Streets of Carcassonne

La Cité de Carcassonne 

Gardens in front of the castle

Helena and Emma having a ball on the top of a strange mound!

Flowers near the Aude

And here are some of the street pictures of Toulouse!

The first afternoon we walked around (in the rain) and checked out the stores that were around us. We bought a few odds and ends for friends and then wandered into the Capitol building in an attempt to find the Tourism Office. Inside the Capitol building there is a small museum with a few rooms of paintings. They were surprisingly beautiful, one room being an impressionist room and the other full of frescos, statues, and many other paintings. After that, we went to the Tourism Office to get a map and then moseyed to the bank and the post office, finally finding a cafe for a quick gourmand pause. After that, we walked to the Église Saint Sernin and walked through and then headed to the Couvent des Jacobins for a quick peek. We were freezing and it was dark, though, so we swung by the store for groceries, made dinner at the apartment, and watched music videos until we went to bed.

The Capitol

Pretty impressionist (?) painting inside

Beautiful!

Chocolat gourmand: Hot chocolate plus three mini desserts

Inside the church

Mother Theresa's prayer

Inside the convent at night

Cool street art on the way home!

The second day we started out by going to the Japanese gardens! Then, Helena and I took an audio tour of the Couvent des Jacobins (an old Dominican convent) and then met Emma at an English teahouse for a late lunch. I ate a "Meat Pie" which sounds mildly disgusting but was actually a really good pot pie filled with ground beef and lots of spices, and I also had a delicious hot chocolate. Afterwards, we trudged through the icy rain again to see the Abbatoirs, a modern art museum housed in an old slaughterhouse. After that, we went home because it was just too cold. However, our last escapade was to eat at a traditional Toulousian restuarant. We chose a place called La Gouille. It was a small little restuarant with really hearty food for only 13 euros. We had vegetable soup with homemade bread as a starter and then I chose the cassoulet (a white bean stew made with duck and sausage) and Emma had the camembert rôti (melted camembert with roasted potatoes and a piece of bacon. We were extremely full and happy afterwards. There was even a concert going on downstairs. The boys in the band told us to come down and watch but we were so full, we knew it was time to sleep.

The coolest and scariest jungle gym

this contraption is meant for children

How no one gets sued for this amazes me

Japanese gardens

The meeting room where they decided things democratically!

The cathedral

The refectory (their lunchroom!)

"Meat Pie"

Highly recommend this tea room! BAPZ

Crossing the New Bridge.

Inside the Abattoirs (modern art museum)

The rainy streets of Toulouse 

The brick with the blue!

Walking through the streets, that's Emma and me

Mildly awkward bridge pic

Veggie soup!

Cassoulet (white bean stew with duck confit and sausage)

Roasted camembert and potatoes and bacon that Emma ordered

The next day I took a Blablacar back to Toulon around 11, so I didn't really do anything. Got up, grabbed a sandwich and took the metro out to the last stop to get picked up. Had a weird run-in with the owner of a cafe there. I was waiting for my car share and I went to get a croissant and a coffee. I was drinking out of my water bottle when the owner said I wasn't allowed to drink "outside water". Needless to say, I and the only other people who were there (three ladies who had bought food in hopes of using the restroom that they weren't allowed to use or that wasn't working, it was unclear) left because the owner made us feel rather unwelcome.

About four hours later, I was back in Toulon for the evening (home sweet home!) before I flew out to Germany the next day. More to come about Germany and Prague which were amazing trips!