I arrived in Toulouse with absolutely no idea what there was to do there.  I had booked a room in someones apartment via AirBnB which I was excited about because it was finally a private room where I could spread out all of my things and relax for a bit.  I booked two nights and decided to see what the city had to offer.  The bus ride took 8 hours, so by the time I arrived the day was already mostly gone.  I opted to go for a run to get a preview of what I wanted to do in the morning.  The below picture is from the next night but I wanted to make it the first picture in the post.  This is unedited and straight from camera!

There was a great running path along the river that I took advantage of on my run!

It was getting dark, so i didn’t stay out for very long, but it was still fun.  There were a bunch of other runners as well.

That evening I decided to try and figure out what I was going to do the next day which is when I found out that the AirBus factory was located in Toulouse and that it was famous for it’s aviation industry.  This is one of those circumstances where I wish I had done some research ahead of time.  It turns out that if you are not an EU citizen and want to take the airbus tour, you must give them 48 hours notice.  Since I was trying to get a tour for the next, day it was too late and I was not able to get to a tour.  However, on the same property as the factory, there was an aviation museum which I guess was a decent plan B.  It was pretty far out of town so I opted to run there rather than take the light rail.

I woke up decently ealry and arrived more or less when they opened.  I assumed incorrectly that they would accept tap/apple pay on their machines since most of Europe does and di not bring any money or a credit card.  I found out that I would be able to buy a ticket online and was extremely lucky that the credit card autofill was still set up on my web browser so it filled in my credit card automatically.  The website said it could take up to an hour to sync with the systems so I was really hoping that they were wrong.  I did have to wait about 10 minutes after making my purchase for the barcode to work, but eventually I gained entrance to the museum.

They had a whole bunch of cool planes on display, including one of the Concrodes that actually flew in service as well as a mockup which you could go inside.

They also has the original Baluga transport plane, which has since been replaced with a larger version.

They also had a few military planes as well as private jets.  I also learned a bit more about the history of Airbus and how it got it’s beginnings.

I spent a decent ammount of time wandering around the museum, but eventually decided it was time to make my way back to the apartment, so i could wash up and hit the streets for exploration.  On the run home i passed these weird ruins that seemed like an old stadium of some sort.  There was no documentation but it was called Amphithéâtre Romain Toulouse and from the tourism website it states “The only monument from Antiquity that is still visible in Toulouse in its entirety, the Roman amphitheatre of Purpan was built around the middle of the 1st Century A.D. It was the perfect stage for gladiatorial games up until the end of the IV Century.”

After a quick shower and rest, I headed into town to explore what Toulouse had to offer.  Turns out there was a paddle tennis tournamnet happening in the main square which was really neat.  I sat and watched them play for quite a while.  It was mixed doubles and very entertaining.

I checked out the main church in town Basilique Saint-Sernin de Toulouse which was very nice (but at this point very similar to many of the European churches.)

After a good ammoutn of wandering I found myself a nice craft brewery and sat down for a beer.  The place was called L’Autruche which had decent beers but nothing special although better than the domestic french beers.

Around the corner there was another brewery called the Frog and Rosbif which had a bunch of sports on TV.  One of the games being played was Toronto vs Toulousse which really confused me at the time.  I’ve since learned that there is a rugby team in Toronto called the Wolfpack who play all of their home games in Toronto despite being in a mainly European league.  The owners really wanted to have a team in Toronto, so they pay the extra cost for teams to fly to Toronto for their games.  Thought that was crazy and makes seeing this on TV make way more sense.

After my beverage and some rugby spectating, I went to meet up with a local student who I was chatting with on Couchsurfing hangouts.  He had just moved to the city to start school and was looking to meet people to hang out with!

I feel bad, but I don’t remember his name anymore.  We had a pretty great night though.  Shortly after meeting up we decided to grab a 711 beer and head to the river to watch the sunset and chill.  As the sun started to lower, the colours really started to explode and it turned into the most beautiful sunset I think I have ever seen.  While we were sitting there a guy nearby noticed we were speaking english and asked if he could join.  He turned out to be from Hungary and was also travelling through.  We obviously said sure and before we knew it we had a crew.

Here are a few photos of the sunset,  I haven’t edited any of these (I probably should) but they are still so beautiful right out of camera.

After a night of hanging out with my new friends, it was time to head back to the AirBnB and get some sleep before heading off to my next country.  I sped through France a tad faster than what I would have liked, but I was meeting a friend in Madrid on a certain day and wanted to make sure I got some time in Andorra and Barcelona.  So the next morning I hopped on a bus and headed to Andorra!