Green Toulouse

I spent my first day in Toulouse wandering all of the green areas. I don't know why. I had a map with tons of little x's and circles around sites and possibilities, and something about those green expanses just sucks me in.

So, to start with I wandered towards Toulouse's Japanese gardens. The first thing that interested me about the Japanese garden was its placement. The designs of Japanese gardens are so structured and careful, that I found it interesting that this garden is located within a larger park that is for the most part quite wild. Groves of trees and planted flowerbeds of prairie grasses and wild flowers ring this formal, specific construction.

The Japanese Garden was designed and constructed/planted in 1981 as a place for meditation within the city. In the center is a tea house and a lake, which is crossed by a red bridge--representing one's journey to paradise.

The teahouse holds some lovely displays and descriptions of the meaning behind each aspect of the garden's design and placement. The garden is designed to highlight the passing of seasons. Different flora will dominate at different times, purposefully. The vegetation, water features, and rocks or minerals are three elements that were designed to work together to create a whole. And aspects of the garden represent Japan in its entirety, a small hillock of land to elude to Mount Fuji, etc. In Japanese design pools can represent lakes, rocks denote mountains, and raked sand can mean oceans. If you want to learn more about Japanese garden design, I found this site really interesting.

After that, I headed towards the canals. Getting momentarily distracted by architectural features as I went. What's with the cat dragon sitting on the man's head and the Labyrinth-style hand knocker?

Down by the canal is something my map called la Prairie des Filtres. In fact, when I arrived, everything was marked "Toulouse Plage" or Toulouse Beach. Now, beach is stretching the truth if ever I heard it, but regardless of that fact, it was a bit of a kid's wonderland. From what I gather, the Toulouse Plage operates for the months of summer, and I'd arrived only a few days after it had opened up for the year. I couldn't believe how many different sports and games options I could see in every direction.

There was ping pong and volleyball.

A sand pit, and a sand football/soccer pitch (now that looked like fun). I guess allowing them the use of the term "beach."

There was jungle gym equipment.

Chess (I love how stressed out the man looks to whatever move the small boy in front of him just placed).

Small games of all descriptions.

It looked like a great place for a family or a bunch of kids to spend the day.

After that I wandered past two or three more gardens on my way home, but alas, I got tired of the camera-making. SO, you'll just have to visit yourselves to see those.