Our Blog - Toulouse Christmas Market and Lights

It is the best time of year now ... Christmas! This is our first Christmas post-retirement and first Christmas in Toulouse. So we've been trying to ensure that we are taking in all of the sights, sounds, and tastes associated with this time of the year. We are not heading back to the US for the holidays (we will visit everybody in April) as we wanted to spend our first Christmas here in our new home.

Every year, they set up a Christmas Market in Place du Capitole. They have a pretty good variety with the chalets ... various toys, clothes, and other gifts ... spices & teas, jewelry, organic hand lotions, food items (sausages, honey, confiture, Italian sauces) for later use, food for eating (sausages in a number of ways ...sandwiches, with sauerkraut, with spatzle ... toasted cheese tartines, pretzels, various regional potato dishes like Aligot and Truffaut. and of course, hot wine!). We've sampled a pretty good selection of items for lunches ... our goal is to try everything food-wise before Christmas. These are really just a set of pictures to give a view of the market, specifically at night when you can get a view of the lights.

They also have various light displays throughout the city. We've captured a few of them here, grouped by general area. Again, just general pictures to show what light displays are shown. We'd been seeing them string lights around the city for the last month or so, but they just turned them on a couple days back.

In Place Wilson, they had various colored lights hanging from the trees and a white "something" in the middle (not sure if I can say exactly what it is).

Next up is Place Saint-Georges, where they have colored lights on some of the buildings as well as a "tree" in the middle. On the street leaving the place to the South had these large circles of various colors.

In the middle of the square, there was a "Creche vivant", or the living nativity scene. There were kids that were playing the various roles ...although this evening there seemed to be only one 'wise man'.

They also had somewhat of a really small petting zoo ... a couple baby goats and a donkey. The baby goats seemed very nervous, although one was happy when Susan was petting it!

One of the streets that seemed to have some of the most lights was Rue Metz, where they had lots of gold balls. Mind you .. the pictures seem to be a bit blurry (sorry).

Many of the side streets had strings of lights and red ornament-shaped lights. There is also a nice statue (leaving Place Saint-Georges) that had these nice lights above it (unfortunately, 1 of them seems to not be working).

And lastly, heading up rue Alsace-Lorraine, they have these waves of lights up the entire way, from rue Metz all the way up to the carousel at Jeanne d'Arc. Within Square General de Gaulle, they have a HUGE tree setup, which is really not a tree but is like a "tea-cups" carnival ride. I tried to get a few pictures of it with various colors, and you can even see the Donjon of the Capitole building in the background. Then as we got the Jeanne d'Arc, they had a tree-of-balls created next to the carousel, and then one of the restaurants also had a great holiday-light out front of their door.