Toulouse, Niaux Caves + Carcassonne

An afternoon flight from Luton, arriving at 5.30pm, gave us plenty of time for the bus into Toulouse from the airport and an easy walk to our little apartment on rue Saint-Henri (northeast of the centre, not too far from the train station). We had dinner in a little restaurant around the corner.

In the morning I went out to get food for breakfast from the bakery at one end of the road (which became my my micro-ritual for the trip) and the Carrefour supermarket at the other. After that we walked into town, looked at the Basilica Saint Sernin, wandered around the city centre, had lunch and looked at the Pont Neuf.

Camilla wasn't feeling well, so she went back to the apartment while I took Helen to the Jardin des Plantes, where she went on a carousel and the dodgem cars and then did multiple loops of a large climbing frame. Then we walked back into town, met Camilla at Place Wilson, and Helen had a go on another carousel before cassoulet dinner.

The next day, after bakery breakfast, we picked up a car at Europcar, near the station, and set off. We stopped once at a services and then for cakes in Tarascon, before getting to our booked tour of the Niaux caves at 1.15pm.

The Niaux caves are amazing. We had to walk over a kilometre underground to get to the Black Chamber where most of the animal drawings are, but that was an adventure in itself, using flashlights and traversing a varied and uneven surface. The paintings are spectacular, and being in among them gives both a different perspective - one can see how the natural rock features are incorporated - and a completely different experience to looking at photographs. (Helen had previously baulked at caves, but had no problems here.)

Afterwards we went to the nearby Prehistory Park, which is also excellent. The main museum exhibition does a good job of conveying the feel and experience of being in a cave, and there are artefacts with drawings, videos, etc. as well. There are also some dioramas with life-size mammoth, bison etc. and a game where you get to race a cave lion. The outside area was also attractive, with great views of the mountains around, and had lots of stuff to do — a maze, workshops — but we were running out of time and Helen just wanted to climb in the playground.

Then we drove to Foix and wandered around and did some shopping while waiting for the restaurants to open, before having an excellent dinner (in the highly rated but not expensive Guarana, recommended by a shopkeeper; we got the last table because we turned up just as they opened) and then driving back to Toulouse in the dark.

We had the car for one more day, so we drove out to Mas d'Azil. We didn't get a place in the cave tour there, but we had lunch near the caves, then did a short walk from the town centre to a dolmen. Back in Toulouse (after getting stuck in a horrible peak-hour traffic jam) we had a great seafood dinner with some Oxford friends, including a classmate of Helen's, who were completely coincidentally also visiting Toulouse. Helen got to do her first crab-from-claw extraction.

The next day there were problems with some services cancelled due to flooding the previous week, but in the end we managed to get a later train to Carcassonne, using our booked tickets.

We walked through the modern city, which was really pleasant, and did some shopping, then went across the river to the medieval city. This was nicer than I remembered it, and not too crowded; we met up with the same friends and Helen was very happy to have a friend to run around the castle and ramparts with. we visited the School Museum and had dinner before walking back to the station for an 8pm train back to Toulouse.

On our last day we took the bus to the Space City, in overcast and drizzling weather.

On the final morning we said goodbye to our flat and walked down to get the bus to the airport for our 11am flight.