“The Toulouse City Council works to promote the use of bicycles in the city, and to make cycling safer and more spontaneous.” So it says on the city’s website. In 2013, a magazine called TerraEco made a list of French cities “which are good to ride in”, and they ranked Read More …
My train from Paris to Toulouse was a TGV (= Train of Great Speed), leaving the station Paris-Montparnasse at 12:28 and arriving Toulouse-Matabiau five and a half hours later, at 17:57. There was one brief stop in Bordeaux along the way. When I left Toulouse a few days later it Read More …
Thanks to its location in the south-west of France, Toulouse was far removed from the battlefields of the First World War, still known today in France as The Great War. But the horrors of war were soon felt down here as trainloads of wounded soldiers arrived at Matabiau Station and Read More …
At 3 rue du Taur, just off of Place du Capitole, there is a Gibert Joseph bookshop. This is one of a chain of bookshops that can be found in various French cities, especially near the universities. I have always liked Gibert Joseph because I used to buy my books Read More …
A pleasant thing to do in Toulouse is to take a cruise on the Garonne River — even though there is hardly anything to see from the boat. The boats leave from Quai de la Daurade, and there is a ticket booth by the dock on Place de la Daurade. Read More …
In Toulouse I went on two guided walking tours on two consecutive days. Both were organized by the city tourist office. The normal cost was listed as € 9.50 per tour, but I only paid € 7.50 because of my advanced age. (Nice that they have senior discounts.) Each tour Read More …
My second guided walking tour was called “Grand Monuments of Toulouse” and was again organized by the city tourist office. I was pleased to find that we again had the same guide, Sarah, only this time she had a microphone and a small loudspeaker. This made no difference to me, Read More …
This major art museum in Toulouse was founded during the French Revolution and is still located in the old Augustinian Convent, which was constructed beginning in the fourteenth century. By the sixteenth century Toulouse had more than 25 religious orders (depending on what you count as what), not only the Read More …
The streets in Toulouse have signs in two languages, first French and then Occitan, the traditional language of southern France. Like other regional languages in France, Occitan was long suppressed, ridiculed and sometimes even forbidden by the French central government. Hardly anyone in Toulouse actually speaks Occitan any more, as Read More …
When you come out of the Toulouse-Matabiau railway station, the first thing you see is the Canal du Midi — unless you just cross the bridge without even noticing it. By today’s standards, the Canal du Midi (Canal of the South) does not look particularly monumental, in fact it looks Read More …