Toulouse Tickles Our Fancy

Toulouse is an attractive pedestrian friendly city filled with parks and split by a river. The downtown is almost fully car free with lots of impressive architecture. Our visit coincided with the start of spring, allowing us to take full advantage of the city parks and enjoy long walks along the waterways. A couple of nice art museums, historic churches, and an incredible day trip to nearby Albi rounded out our experience. 

Toulouse is home to 500,000 people, making it the fourth largest city in France. It’s nicknamed the Pink City because the most common building block is terracotta brick that gives a rosy tint to much of the infrastructure. The Garonne River bisects the downtown and this pink hue is especially prominent along the walls of the waterway. A charming old bridge from the 1600s spans the river adding to the charm.

Our journey from Dijon to Toulouse was a long one. It took us 9 hours by train, including a 1 hour stopover in Lyon. But once we arrived, it felt like we had time traveled from winter directly into spring. Trees and flowers were blossoming, birds were singing, and we even left the house without a coat on some days. With that spring weather came storms and heavy winds though. Several days during our stay we experienced wind gusts strong enough that city parks closed their gates for safety reasons. Falling branches are a serious hazard when gusts are 60+ mph (95 kph). 

Jardin de Plantes

We stayed near the Botanical Garden, which was also connected to two other parks via pedestrian bridge. None of the parks were that big on their own, but together they combined to make a sizable space with fountains, flowers, statues, grassy expanses, and plenty of benches. The overall setup was pretty great, as long as the winds cooperated enough to keep the gates open. 

Disappointingly, the actual botanical garden part of the Jardin de Plantes was part of the paid entrance to the natural history museum. But the rest of the park and its neighbors are freely accessible and very popular, including with the birds. There were a couple dozen chickens living in the Jardin de Plantes including several absolutely gorgeous rooster specimens. 

Garonne Riverside

When the sun was out, the locals flocked to the banks of the Garonne River to soak in the rays. Sunny weekends were especially busy, with groups of friends chatting, playing music, drinking, and chilling. Outside of the downtown area, the crowds switch from lazing to active as the multi-use paths along the river are popular with runners, walkers, and bikers. River activity also includes cormorants fishing and white wagtails catching bugs.

Canal Paths

Running mostly parallel to the river is a tree lined canal. We really liked walking along the canal, even more so than the river. This was especially true following the canal south of town. It has a wide multi-use path that tracks it for several miles. The canal is lined with massive London Plane trees on both sides. While we were too early in the season for them to be green, I have to imagine it’s super nice during the summer months as it would be shady the whole way. It was a great place to get some steps in.

Basilique Saint-Sernin

Speaking of long walks, on the north side of town is the impressive Saint Sernin Basilica. This worship building is a stop on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route from Southern France to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. The current building had initial construction that started sometime in the 9th century, although it was not completed for hundreds of years. The bell tower is several stories high and combined with the other levels of the basilica make for some very interesting architecture. The church was designated a UNESCO Heritage Site in 1998 and features the common pinkish hue of the area. 

Fondation Bemberg Musée

The top art museum in Toulouse showcases the once private collection of George Bemberg. Born into wealth, he used his privilege to immerse himself into the art scene and secured an extensive list of works before turning them into a museum. Housed in a downtown mansion, the George Bemberg Foundation Museum has a wide variety of impressive art. One of Mr. Bemberg’s favorite artists was Pierre Bonnard, and the museum hosts over 30 of his paintings making Bonnard by far the most represented artist.

Les Abattoirs

The contemporary art museum in Toulouse is in the space of a former slaughterhouse. The name, Les Abattoirs, literally translates to The Slaughterhouses. The part that I enjoyed the most was a temporary exhibit called Oli’s Imaginary Museum. Oli is half of a local hip hop duo called BigFlo & Oli, although the art had little to do with rap music. Instead, it was just a large space filled with his inspirations. It had music from a player piano, a giant wall of art, a replica model of his creative space, and more. 

Day Trip To Albi

Albi is a small city of 50,000 just under an hour away from Toulouse by train. It’s a cute place with a rich history. The main reason we made the trip was for the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum. We really liked the museum and it would’ve been worth the trip alone, but it turned out to be the second best thing that we’d see there. The museum was upstaged by the Albi Cathedral, which was ridiculously impressive. I’m so glad we had time to stop by.

Musée Toulouse-Lautrec

The Toulouse-Lautrec Museum houses the largest collection of the artworks by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec anywhere. Albi is his birthplace, and the museum features both obscure and famous art from Toulouse-Lautrec from throughout his short lifetime. Henri was plagued with health problems from birth, likely because his parents were first cousins. He also really liked the booze, so much of his most famous work depicts Paris nightclub scenes where he spent the majority of his waking hours. His paintings and drawings from the Moulin Rouge are especially noteworthy. 

Toulouse-Lautrec was one of the first painters to focus on regular working people including barmaids, prostitutes, and other people in the urban underclass. He also found a creative outlet in advertising. Toulouse-Lautrec was one of the first people to turn ads into an artform. Many of his original styles are still being copied for print advertisements to this day, and the museum did a nice job displaying these as well.

Cathédrale Sainte-Cécile d’Albi

After the museum, we visited the Sainte-Cecile Cathedral and as I mentioned, we were completely blown away. This small town cathedral is as ornate and beautiful as any we’ve seen. The intricacy on the carved stone façade, both inside and outside, was simply incredible. And every square centimeter of the walls, floors, and ceilings had some impressive detail. We marveled at the carved stone, woodwork, painting, frescos, tile, marble, and more. I think I took more pictures here than in all of the Notre Dames that we’ve seen combined. It’s also in amazing shape for something that dates to the 13th century.

Where We Stayed

We rented a one bedroom apartment just southeast of downtown near the Jardin de Plantes. Our block was right in between the park and the canal, so it was tough to beat the location. The rental had a great kitchen with tons of counter space that we really loved. Unfortunately, the bedroom had an old mattress that needed replacing. My back is still fussy several weeks later.

What We Spent

Toulouse was a pretty expensive stop for us. Our apartment was kind of steep at $2217, although at least that covered 32 nights instead of our regular 28. We also used this longer stay to get some health maintenance done. We both had dental cleanings. And after 7 years, I finally made an ophthalmologist appointment, which resulted in me getting new glasses. So now I can absorb the beauty of France in crisp detail for the remainder of our stay. In total, we spent $4038 while in Toulouse. Adding in regular bills like mail service and blog fees, our total amount spent during these 32 days comes to $4284, or about $134/day.

We really liked welcoming the spring season in Toulouse. The multiple parks and waterside paths were perfect ways to indulge in the warmer weather. The downtown area was great and the winding streets always seemed to have something new to discover. We loved our day trip to Albi too. In a perfect world we would’ve stayed in a different apartment, or at least had a different bed, but it didn’t mar the stay too badly. Toulouse is a really nice city.