Balma, Occitania, France
Our original French travel plans begin with a series of 6 homes we are swapping with French families over the summer. The first is in Balma, France, a suburb of Toulouse in Occitania. As we drive, the terrain changes from craggy mountains to farm country, main crops being corn, other grains, and sunflowers! The house is large, beautiful, and crucially, equipped with a pool.
The day we arrived was a Sunday and most grocery stores were closed by mid-day. We found a small market to get provisions but had to save most of our shopping til the next day. We decided to use the morning for a day trip into Toulouse, where we saw the Capital Square a pair of interesting church buildings.
The medieval Couvent des Jacobins is a bit austere on the outside, but opens up to an expansive and uniquely designed nave. The walls are painted to look like marble and the columns fan out in a ‘palm tree’ design over the tomb of Thomas Aquinas. We didn’t pay to enter the cloister area. The Basilique Saint-Sernin, on the other hand, has a very recognizable exterior Romanesque design built in Toulouse’s signature ‘pink’ clay bricks.
The other main site we wanted to visit was closed Monday, but luckily, we had another excuse to go back into town a couple days later. We stopped by the Victor Hugo market for some local delicacies before heading to the train station to pick up a special delivery!
Toulouse is a tech center due to the HQ of Airbus, the Galileo positioning system, SPOT satellite system and others. We stopped by one of the many science museums, the epic Space Cite with a planetarium, IMAX, a duplicate of the Mir space station, and replicas of Mars Rovers.
We got to see a series of well preserved medieval towns within an hour or so of the house. First, Albi, on the river Tarn, birthplace of Toulouse Lautrec and every inch of whose cathedral was painted.
Then Cordes-sur-Ciel, a beautiful walled city on a hill with sweeping views and ren-faire style costumes.
On our way to the next stop it was Carcassonne, dating back to pre-Roman times, taken by the Visigoths, highly strategic through the Middle Ages and restored to one of the best preserved fortress cities in Europe. I’ve long longed to see this one and it lived up to the hype!
