This is a great city to walk. It seems everywhere you turn around there are (very) old churches, interesting archecture, local artwork outside and of course flowers. This post is designed to give you our ‘feel’ or ‘take’ on the city from our perspective.
Since our AirBNB was in the old city, our taxi driver literally drove through one of their most notable squares – I thought he was making a wrong turn. Nope, everybody does it. There was a gap between the umbrellas and that was the driving lane.
Besides all of these eating establishments it’s also a notable meeting spot as seen one morning for a bicycle tour.
There are numerous pedestrian zones, which also highlights their living area. We have seen a lot of 4-5 story buildings, bottom are the shops and above are living areas.
And just in case you don’t want to make your balcony your ‘green zone’ a few steps away could be one of your neighborhood’s green zone.
Complete with a few colorful flowering gardens.
Walking through their narrow streets……….
…………you might also come across artwork on their balconies, like this yellow sculpture.
Invariably it seems you walk past one of their churches like we did.
It was a gothic church dedicated to Mary in 1534. Smaller than most we’ve walked into, I was standing in the middle and took photos toward the pulpit, turned around and got a shot of their organ.
For being relatively small it contained numerous striking features and stained glass in their side chapels.
The choir had these beautiful carved seats.
So glad we stopped in this city. While I knew almost nothing about Toulouse, wanted to share a few facts about the city that I listed below.
~Today Toulouse is the center of the European aerospace industry.
~The University of Toulouse is one of the oldest in Europe – founded in 1229.
~It is the fourth largest student city in France with a university population of 140,000 students.
During our time here we felt we were part of a community, not on holiday. That’s kind of a nice feeling.
Darden Travels 