Dec. 20-21, 2014

We took a high speed train from Barcelona, Spain to Toulouse, France. We made it to our destination in just over three hours. We had only one night in Toulouse and we arrived at 9:00 pm, so we didn't get to see much. We really felt the winter cold now.

Toulouse is the fourth largest city in France with about 1.2 million people in the metropolitan area. It felt smaller though. There were no cabs at the train station. We waited outside in the taxi line shaking for a good 15 minutes before one showed up. We used our points for a nice hotel instead of getting two cheaper rooms near the train station. We checked in, took a look at our room, dropped the bags and left to take a quick look around town.

We were in the center of Toulouse. The whole city was beautifully decorated with holiday lights. The streets were narrow and quaint. You definitely got the French vibe. The main square near the opera house had a lovely Christmas market.

Lovely centerpiece (and Maeve too), but a little too dark to see her

We had an early train out of Toulouse to Auch, France to meet our house sitting family. We didn't get much time in Toulouse, but we would end up returning on New Year's Day for another night on our way back to Barcelona. This was a week before the attacks in Paris. Demonstrations took place all over France afterwards, including Toulouse where about 10,000 people gathered in the center here.