Cycling in Toulouse

Many people in toulouse use a nice red bicycle with a basket on the front. You can rent these bikes at many points throughout the city, there's even one in my own street. The first time I wanted to rent a bike wasn't that easy. Me and my mother wanted to go to the center and we thought the easiest and nicest way to get there is with a bike.

The machine:
We looked on the display of the machine next to the bikes and switched the language to English (My french is not that good). The cheapest option for us was to rent a bike for one day, which was 1,20 euro. Really cheap right!! So you have to put in your bankcard so they can take a deposit of 150 euro and 1,20 euro for the day. Then you get a ticket from the machine with a code (maybe for if you want to rent the bike again later on the day). You have to fill in twice a personal 4 number code for your bike, so I filled in a really easy one. I didn't see the option rent a bike right away (which was there), I thought I had to go to the home screen to fill in the code of the ticket and then my personal code. This also should be the way when you want to take the bike again later on the day. So then I had to fill in my personal code which was suddenly the wrong code according to the machine. After filling in the wrong code three times it was blocked and I paid 1,20 euro for nothing. So I tried again, again the machine said the code was wrong. Third time I used another code (my birth year, which I can't forget) and also this one was wrong. So 3,60 euro later we stopped trying and took the bus.

After dinner at a nice restaurant at Capitole we tried to take the bike one more time at another point. We took our time and filled in our new personal code really carefully on the touchscreen. But since we were quiet slow and there was a man waiting to rent a bike, we let him go first. We tried again and suddenly the machine didn't accept my bankcard. Again we let another man in line go first, there were three bikes left at this station, so that would be enough for the three of us right? So the man rented a bike through the machine, but found out that he had the last available bike according to the machine!! He apologized and told us where the next point would be which wasn't that far. So after five times trying, we still weren't able to rent a bike.

When we tried again at the new station, we saw the option in the end to rent a bike right away. (why didn't we saw that earlier!!) Finally we had two bikes and cycled home. But I still don't know how to use the ticket of the machine later on the day again, because everytime it says my personal code is wrong.

Worst of all!!
After a week or two finally someone told me the real story about renting a bike in Toulouse. I found out that it's not only 1,20 euro per day, That's only the price for taking the bike, but then you will pay per hour. The first 30 minutes are free, so it's perfect if you only want to go to the center and put the bike back at one of the stations. I didn't know that and two times when I went out all the bikes in the center were gone. Every station was empty, so everyone takes a bike after going out to go home. So when I went out again I took a bike from the station in my street and didn't put it in one of the stations, but locked it and took it again in the morning, I did this maybe twice, and had to pay 27 euro and 47 euro for two nights!! Not that cheap after all. I could have bought my own bike for that money haha.