Tou-tel-loo

Toulouse (pop 390,000) is an organised hi-tech city happily co-existing with the redish-pink tinge of its classic older buildings. The city features the longest Romanesque church in the world (115m) built in 1096. Toulouse is the final resting place of St Thomas Aquinas and the home of the largest aircraft in the world - the Airbus A380.

Visiting the Airbus factory was definately a highlight of the trip so far. We saw the first customer A380 (Singapore Airlines in photo). We saw live footage of the first ever A380 test flight on 27 April 2005 followed by a visit inside the huge assembly line (20 football fields containing four A380s: 3 for Singapore & 1 for Qantas which was hidden). So far a total of 13 of 159 A380s have been built. The A380 is built in pieces in England, Germany, Spain and France - the pieces are shipped, flown and semi-trailered to Toulouse where they are assembled like a model in just one week (we saw time-lapse of this process)! The list price of an A380 is 300m euro (one third of this is engines, another third is the cabin fitout) so we settled for a model instead! The largest customer is Emirates with 43 and Qantas has ordered 10. Two thousand people work on the A380 and 4 are built every month. The A380 is trully spectacular! Distance travelled so far 7,525km.