We will be spending a week in the Toulouse are in May. We know we will want to visit Carcassonne one day, and Albi another. Two questions:
1. Should we book a car for those day trips or go by train or bus? We will be getting a car after that week, to travel North from Toulouse.
2. What other sites within an hour’s travel of Toulouse would you suggest?
We are 4 adults “d’une certaine âge” with interests in music, art, history…
Thanks!
You might post this in the France section not on the "tours" section and you should get answers.
We took the train to Albi for the day from Toulouse. Very easy, ±1 hour. No need to rent a car unless you are also trying to go to Cordes-sur-Ciel. We didn't go there but Carcassonne is an easy train ride. Former Cather stronghold Foix is easily reachable from Toulouse. Toulouse may be our favorite French city. Brad
The trains take about an hour and a half from Toulouse to both Albi and Carcassonne; and then the same time back. It takes an hour to drive to each. You can actually drive from Albi to Carcassonne without going back to Toulouse. It would probably be a very long day because this is part of the Tour de France Bike Race Route and is probably very twisty but beautiful way to go as this area is an UNESCO World Heritage Landscape. Maybe you could put this at the end of your stay in Toulouse and spent the night in Albi before going north. I assume that you will visit the Toulouse Lautrec Museum in Albi! Bon Voyage!
Toulouse is one of my favorite cities in France.
The trains are easy to take and you dont have to worry about parking. Too bad you can't spend the night in Carcassone. To me, that's when the city is at its best when all the day trippers have gone. I was there in November of 2021 and stayed inside the city walls. I could walk for blocks and saw no one. Wonderful.
In Toulouse, make sure you visit the Marche Victor Hugo (food market). Go hungry. Lots of little food stalls selling prepared as well as raw food.
If traveling by train, I second the suggestion of Foix as an easy, low-key daytrip from Toulouse. The castle itself is small, but has a good interpretive museum with multilingual audio-guides. The town itself is compact, charming, affordable, and not very touristy. If you're interested in pre-history and cave art, you can take the same train line for another 10-15 minutes to Tarascon-sur-Ariege. The Parc de la Prehistoire has life-size models of the Niaux cave and other cave art from the region. I actually like it better than visiting the actual caves. It's a 5-10 minute taxi ride from the train station. Plus, it's in a gorgeous mountain setting.
There's plenty to do within Albi if you go by train. However, if you do have a car and really like Toulouse-Latrec, you could continue on to his family castle in Camjac (Chateau du Bosc). It's filled with his family's belongings, as well as drawings he made as a child on the walls.
BTW. There's a podcast called Join us in France created by two women who live in Toulouse (one American, one French) so they have several episodes on places to visit near Toulouse.
Thanks you, all, for those helpful comments! All good food for thought! Today we are having a big snowstorm here (near Ottawa, Canada), and I will be using our “snow day” to do more research about France in May. Escapism at its best!
