Toulouse is called “The Pink City” because of the distinct orangeish pink bricks used in many buildings, …

… and bridges.

We spent six days in Toulouse where Tomi was invited to give a talk in a conference. Tei spent those days exploring the city and its parks. The city was quite pretty, but nothing to fall in love with. Four days of walking downtown resulted in sore throat and headache because of the exposure of extensive second hand smoke. As if Grenoble isn’t bad enough, Toulouse is larger and the number and density of smokers much bigger.

Talking about parks, Jardin Japonais was particularly impressive. Modeled after parks in Kyoto, it was created in 1982 by Toulouse’s former mayor Pierre Baudis, who was a big fan of oriental cultures, especially Japanese.

We stayed in the Airbnb next to Marché des Carmes.

On the first conference day, I joined Tomi and other conference guests for the conference dinner at Le Café Chouchou. It was probably the worst one we’ve ever attended. First, we were seated in the very busy area between the entrance and the bar, not in the proper dining hall. Secondly, the food was terrible. Luckily, we only had to pay for my dinner (28 euros), since Tomi’s was covered by the conference organization (he was an invited speaker).

When Tomi was done with the conference we strolled  around the town some more. When we walked past this Pétanque bar I tried to take a photo of these guys in action, but they noticed my intentions and  decided to pose for me instead.

On our last day in Toulouse and Haute-Garonne department, we did a one-day excursion to Carcassonne. That’s the topic of the next post.