Toulouse sits at a crossroads that makes day trips unusually varied. The Pyrenees begin about 110 km to the south — Andorra and ski resorts like Font-Romeu and Ax-les-Thermes are reachable in under two hours. The walled medieval city of Carcassonne, with its double circuit of towers, is 90 minutes by direct TGV. Albi, a UNESCO city built entirely in the same pink brick as Toulouse and home to the largest brick cathedral in the world, is an hour by train. Montauban — birthplace of the painter Ingres — is 50 km north, with a handsome old town on the Tarn river. For coast, Narbonne and Sète on the Mediterranean are around 90 minutes southeast.