You've got everything, Toulouse

I'm a little more than halfway through my exploration of Europe and North Africa, but the French city of Toulouse remains my literal home away from home. Here's why

Looking out over the Rivière Garonne toward the ancient Pont Neuf in Toulouse.

It has been almost six months since I landed in Europe. That seems long ago, yet it also feels like yesterday sometimes. I didn’t know what to expect of the city I had chosen as my home base, Toulouse. It just seemed, from 5,800 km away, to send out the right vibe.

I chose the city mainly because I had met a few really cool people from Toulouse in Montréal over the years, including my neighbour when I lived in a studio apartment on Carré St-Louis in the mid ’90s. Xavier was studying to be a doctor and spoke very fondly of his home town. I also learned to love the Toulouse accent, which I thought had an almost Irish cadence to it, with pronunciation that was easier to understand than the québécois joual I was struggling to master at the time.

I also chose Toulouse for the climate. It was southern France, but not Côte d’Azure or French Riviera. Temperate but not tropical in summer (tho most of southern Europe has set heat records in recent years). I couldn’t see myself in Nice or Cannes, and my holiday week in Marseilles 20 years earlier had turned me off the city, especially streets that were peppered with fresh and fetid feces of the canine variety.

That’s not a lot to go on, I know. Choosing a city like you’re picking a date on Bumble. Sure, the pictures are great and the profile sounds cool, but what do you really know?

There was lots I didn’t know about Toulouse. I didn’t know that, like Montréal, it was dominated by a large river (la Garonne). Nor that, like Montréal, much of its growth had been fed by the construction of a canal (du Midi), built to help move large quantities of goods across a vast expanse. And that when that canal was no longer needed for commerce, it would be converted into a blue-green linear park, proving an oasis of nature for cyclist and pedestrians in the heart of the city.

A fall day walking along the Canal du Midi. You barely know you’re still in a city.

Canal du Midi. The last shot shows that the problem of bikes dumped in the canal is not unique to Montréal.

I didn’t know that old Toulouse is extremely pedestrian friendly, with cars severely limited in the old town and directed for the most part to underground lots. I didn’t know it had a decent transit system including trams and a subway system that was adding a third line and 21 new stations.

Getting around Toulouse without a car is pretty easy (1-4). You'll also find cars are smaller than in Canada, but sometimes they go overboard (5). Yes, it's an Airbus bus (6)! The transit system has a sense of humour, as you can see (7).

Or that it was a huge university town, 140,000 students in 27 post-secondary institutions, including 8,000 at TBS (the Toulouse Business School which will be more than happy to take the English-Canadian students that Québec is scaring off with its discriminatory tuition policies).

It’s a vibrant, cosmopolitan city that’s been booming economically thanks to the presence of Airbus, the giant in the aviation and aerospace industry that in 2018 rescued the A220 jet program, pride of Québec Inc.’s Bombardier. With 28,000 employees in the region, it sometimes feels like everyone here has an Airbus connection.

Toulouse has it all, even poutine!

So La Ville Rose (pink is the colour of the local clay used in the bricks and tiles of much of the area) turned out to be a damn fine first choice, so far. But I still have a lot more France to see in the coming months, including the west coast from Bordeaux to Calais. I also want to work in a road trip through southern Spain, with side trips to wherever my fancy may lead me.

As the French say, however, I may have “les yeux plus gros que le ventre.” We’ll see if I have the time (or the money) to do everything I’ve got planned (or unplanned) before I head back home in June. And while I’m figuring out the next steps, my next few posts will review the some of the 14 places I’ve had the privilege to share with you so far.

Today’s highlight is Toulouse itself, of course, with some select photos in the above galleries.

And to wrap it up, here’s video of a new song by singer-composer Francis Cabrel. It’s a love song to the city and the wonderful, amusing official video has shots of many of my favourite places here. If the name Cabrel seems familiar, it’s no doubt because you’ve heard his 1970s hit, Je l’aime à mourir, among other classics.

Here you go. I hope you enjoy the video as much as I’ve enjoyed sharing my stories from the road with you. À bientôt.