One could argue that you can do Canal du Midi justice only by renting a boat to navigate a portion of it. On the other hand, the canal itself is uniformly the same narrow strip of water at any point of its stretch, only the surrounding scenery may vary. Finding myself in Toulouse and having only a couple of hours to spare in August of 2017, I figured I'd stop at a few random points along the canal and call it a reasonable visit.

The first stop was in the center of Toulouse, between Boulevard des Minimes and Boulevard Matabiau. The canal there looks like any stream in an urban setting, nothing too exceptional.

I then drove to the edge of the city, to the municipality of Ramonville-Saint-Agne, where the canal touches a small marina of Port de plaisance de Port Sud. On this stretch, boats and barges line one side of the waterway, while the north bank becomes a walking and biking path.

Further southeast, in Donneville, the canal fully assumes rural features, dissecting fields and rolling by small villages. On the north bank, the walking/biking path is paved, while on the south bank there are unpaved car tracks.

Finally, at the edge of Ayguesvives, I came across canal locks. Here, the scenery became really picturesque, and I spied couples and families enjoying idyllic tranquillity. The picture is from this stop.

I also stopped at the Port-Lauragais Service Area on A61, which allows pedestrian access to the canal and has an exhibition pavilion dedicated to it. But it was too late in the day to see the exhibition, and I did not think another look at the canal itself would add anything to my impression of it.

Overall, I feel that taking a first-hand look at Canal du Midi does not add a lot in terms of appreciation of this feat of engineering beyond what you can gather from reading about it. Subsequently, if you don't have time for a boating cruise, making a short visit to a random point on the canal is entirely sufficient for "seeing" it. That being said, a boating cruise is still something on the list for my future visits to Occitanie.