39km of 2180km so far…

Day off again today, with a busy program to see and visit places in the city of Toulouse. Lucky enough, specifically during this weekend, around 50 places in the city were free to get in. I had made my list from the day before, so after a good night sleep and a good breakfast in the hostel, I was on the road at around 10am.  My first visit was at the old observatory of Toulouse. There was a photographic exhibition of the construction of observatory up in the peak of Midi at 2887 meters, not far from the col du Tourmalet. Unfortunately they didn’t let me in to the domes, as they would open to the public after midday to observe the sun. One way or another, it was a full overcast, so I doubt the public saw any sun today.

One of the many domes of the observatory

I headed south-west to the town center to walk around the plazas. It was Saturday, the stores were open so the city was very lively, with open markets and happenings.

You say jump, I say how high...

The red brick dominates the city

In one of the squares

Carousel at the center of Toulouse

Inside a church I visited

I then went back to the modern art museum. The main floor was being redone for a new exhibition, but there was another floor that I didn’t visit yesterday as I wanted to take advantage of today’s free entry. It’s been more than a month now, since London, that I haven’t been to an exhibition, so even if it was rather small I really enjoyed it.

ART!!!

I had the typical lunch sandwich and then started making my way to the airport! Don’t worry I am not giving up yet. Toulouse apart from cassoulet, is also famous for its planes. They call them AIRBUS and in Toulouse you will find the main assembly facility. It was rather difficult to get there on a bike, as most airports are not bike friendly. I got lost, I started asking people how to get there, they kept saying they didn’t know without a car and of course it started raining. In the end I did get there on time and I paid €14 for a tour of the A380 hangar in French. We visited the telemetry room, which is a room that gathers thousands of parameters during the test flights and we saw in replay the very first flight test of the fully double decker A380. Later we visited the viewing platform of the hangar where they assembly the planes. There are three of them in there at any time, which means the hangar is very big. Unfortunately they didn’t allow cameras, so you will have to believe me.

You can almost see a couple of the A380s on the far left

That's the huge hangar

And the plane it self taking off

On the way back to the city, I visited a last place, the Aerotheque, which is a civil airplane museum. It had big models of all the AIRBUS series along with many other artifacts.

I think that's a Computer Aided Design tool