Weekend in Toulouse

This weekend we went to Toulouse to visit Philppe and Aniko, who had come to see us in Nice a few weeks earlier. Bravely, we decided to take the night train, which brought us into Toulouse 5:30 Friday morning. In spite of us insisting he shouldn't, Philippe met us at the train station (fortunately he doesn't check his messages very often ;-).






Friday was spent calmly strolling around in Toulouse (although calmly is a kind of relative expression since the thermometer reached +30 degrees...), walking around the river (Garonne) and the canals of Toulouse. Toulouse is the 4th city of France, with a student population of over 100000, famous for it's aeronautics industry, and known as the "pink city". Strangely enough, it kind of reminds me of Manchester (with all the brick buildings) - in a positive way of course ;-). In the evening, we naturally had a couple of pints to cool off... (we were also joined by Marie and Pauline, who are Mathilde's former colleagues from Tormead school in Guildford. They were here on a school trip - small world eh?)





On Saturday, we jumped into the Chevy Philippe had rented (I didn't know they made them THAT small these days...) and drove out to explore the countryside a bit. We visited Cordes sur Ciel (means Cordes "on the sky") - a really pretty little town perched on a hilltop. Quite different from the perched villages of the Cote d'Azur - you can tell people used to be quite well off (and probably still are - what with all the tourists that no doubt come in hordes during the summer). Lovely place!




From here, we headed to Albi (passing by to say hi to one of Philippe's mates on the way), which is famous for its museum housing the most comprehensive selection of Toulouse-Lautrec's work (he was born there). The other famous sight is a massive brick cathedral. Very impressive!

Sunday was spent walking yet more, visiting a Japanese garden. And then spending 7 hours on the train going back to Nice...