Friday, August 07, 2015

Toulouse or to Win


I recently had a business trip to Toulouse, France. Toulouse is the home of Airbus, who has recently won the OneWeb project that will launch some 900 satellites in low orbit to provide global internet all over the world. In any case, I got a chance to get out of Blagnac (which is the airport area) and do some sightseeing in the city, and the picture you see to the right is in downtown near Place du Capitole. The tower you see is that of the Saint Sernin basilica, which is an ancient church originally built around 1300. The French cuisine is really superb, as almost anything you eat is cooked in a very tasty way and presented in a very nice way too. The second picture to the right shows a fish plate I ordered in the Capitole square.
Needless to say the taste was fantastic and I really enjoyed eating that dish. Overall the city is full of students and foreigners in general. There is nothing much in the city other than Airbus and the university there. The streets are narrow and not that clean. The river is called La Garonne and has a few bridges that span across it, with some areas on its banks for joggers and bicyclers, but nothing that impresses you. The third picture to the right shows an area by the river bank. Transportation in the city is quite crowded and sort of confusing. We took a tram from the hotel near the airport to downtown, but it did not go all the way as it was supposed to, as there was some construction going on and we had to get off early and take the metro to make it to the Capitole. Same thing on the way back, we took the metro again to the same station called "Arenes", and from there took the tram to the hotel near the airport.
Others points of attraction in Toulouse are: Cite de l'Espace (city of Space), Chateau de Thegra, Jardins du Museum, Zenith, Basilique Sainte Germaine, Dome de la Grave, Palais des Sports, and Palais de Justice. That was basically it for Toulouse. After I finished work in Toulouse I had the weekend to spend so I decided to go instead to Spain and do some serious sightseeing in Andalusia. So the next three blogs are about Seville, Cordoba and Granada. Those blogs are much more exciting than this one as you will see. So read on the next three blogs and see for yourself.

No comments: