Toulouse is the fourth largest city in France and we had never visited it, though we have driven thru it many times in our comings and goings in France. It is the hub of the French aerospace industry and has the French equivalent of NASA it is not on the tourism path in a big way possibly because it is too far inland for cruise ships to come here on day trips.
Ton did her normal planning for the visit, and I did the navigation. We spent several pleasant hours downtown visiting all of the normal things we go to look at in European cities.
The weather was nice again by the afternoon and there were a lot of people in the streets shopping and enjoying their lunch. Toulouse has several prominent churches and we poked into a couple of them and they were very nice.
The streets were very busy but there was a noticeable absence of guided groups, in fact the only one we saw today was from Lebanon which was a first for us. There was a tourist presence and we heard plenty of American accented English, but it was mostly couples or small groups traveling independently.
What we did notice was the very high percentage of young people on the streets. Toulouse is home to several universities and the number of students is supposed to be around 100,000. So there was a youthful energy to the town that we really enjoyed. A lot of the American accented English we heard came from younger people rather than middle aged and senior people, which we also enjoyed.
After walking it for a few hours we were surprised that it does not attract more visitors than it does. It is a great walkable downtown with interesting and unique architecture, nice old churches, and good food; all of the things that visitors love. But on the other hand we were glad it didn’t attract thousands of visitors in busses to crowd the center. It is a beautiful city that deserves a visit, and hopefully it will continue to strike the right balance without getting overwhelmed with visitors.
