A Day in “Red City” Toulouse // Travel Tuesday

After two days in Sarlat, one of which we spent visiting Lascaux, we drove on south again – to Toulouse.
Toulouse is located in the Region Languedoc-Roussillon-Midi-Pyrénées (wonderful name, right?!) in the Département Haute-Garonne. If you want to know why the names of the Départements and Regions are so different, click here!

Some of you may know Toulouse as the “Airbus” Center, which is totally correct, but now we won´t be looking much at those aspects, we´ll just be taking a closer look at the city itself, it´s architecture and feel!

Come take a walk with me.

We stayed here for two nights, basically only one day, since we arrived late in the evening on one day and left early in the morning on the other one. Nevertheless, that one day was magical. We walked around town pretty much the whole day. We visited three churches and no museums, there was no energy left with 35 degrees Celcius outside and all the walking we were doing. I´ll just take you along a bit with me through la ville rouge (the red city).

Starting off with the Cathedral of Toulouse, Sainte-Étienne. It has absolutely incredibly architecture and is really a beautiful place of silence and prayer. 

When you walk through town, you see a lot of buildings look like the one on the right. The big one on the left is very unusual. Actually, it´s unique. I was walking past, stopped, took a step back and admired this mosaic wall. Just stunning!

This is pretty much the iconic architecture in the richer part of the city.

A view down the main road. This is a beautiful and very long road, which we walked several times, at daylight and at night – both wonderful experiences.

La ville rouge… the red city… can you see why? Btw. these rounded off corners are also pretty typical for the city.

Again this iconic architecture with the balconies and embellishements.

When you walk down the main road you pass by this huge building which is the Capitol from the back.. together with the theater.

And this is what it looks like from the front.

When you stand in front of this huge building, there is a big place behind you. When you cross it and walk through smaller and poorer streets you reach the river of the city: La Garonne.

I  totally love this photo, since it shows that the city also has a more homey feel, not so pompous as the main road. Don´t get me wrong, I love the main road, but this has a much more welcome feel to it. The main road has a specific distance to it, if you know what I mean.

Here I´m standing on a very famous bridge looking down at the Garonne.

This bridge is called “La Pont Neuf”, which was built in the 16th century – so a pretty only bridge.

When you walk back into the city center from here, you first walk through a poor part of the city and then come into more richer parts, like this one.

On your way you may pass by the church “Les Jacobins” of the Dominican religious order, which is the head of all the Dominicans of the world. This church is the center.
This is also where Thomas Aquinus is buried. He was a savant and part of the Dominican order.

We stopped for a good hour and a half to take a look at everything here.

From then on we walked farther back into the city and stopped for a short food stop at a “Boulangerie”. On our way we came by a palace in the middle of the city!!

Furthermore we walked a little more and came by this arch.

Our last stop was Saint Sernin, the church in which the counts of Toulouse were buried. I probably found this one the most beautiful one, maybe because of all the flowers…no, just kidding, it was just beautiful from the inside and the outside.

There was just one thing a little disturbing: There were Pokémon Go stops inside the church, which attracted people with smartphones. (I asked a gentleman with a smartphone very insdiscretly..that´s just me needing to know what was going on…)

I felt extremely weird about all those phones in church.

After all that walking we were pretty exhausted, but still had enough energy for a little shopping. Having been successful we went to our hotel for a little bit to freshen up (and sleep a bit) before going out to eat.

This is what I wore..

We ate in a restaurant called “Saint Maurice” on the Place Georges. The food was really very good. The Place Georges has a lot of wonderful little restaurants, in which the French people eat, not only tourists like us;-)

Another restaurant we ate in was called “Vincent Van Gogh”, in which the food was just excellent! I recommend this over “Saint Maurice”. Although it is a little more pricy, so if you want to save a little money then choose the “Saint Maurice”, which is also really amazing!

I couldn´t help but take a photo of a street we crossed walking home with all of it´s deserted streets, but more or less colorful lights!

I hope you enjoyed walking with me through Toulouse! 

Tell me in the comments down below if you´ve ever been here!

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