Ô my Toulouse!

There are few places more Gallic than Toulouse.

Walk through its streets and you'll pass people chomping on baguettes, riding bicycles in an alarmingly chaotic way and randomly kissing strangers on the cheek - twice.
Yet this isn't some backwards, ultra-traditional French city.
Toulouse is the country's fourth largest, but fasting growing metropolis.
More people are coming to live here every year than in anywhere else in France and it's easy to see why.
Straddling the glistening Garonne River, it's a wonderful fusion of the old and the new; clean, green, tidy, charming and chic.
The first thing that strucks about Toulouse is its vitality.
This is helped in no small part by its heaving student community who number 120,000, making it the second largest campus in the country (after Paris), with three universities and several engineering schools.
Toulouse has been an educational epicentre since 1229, when the Europeans first started to translate the writings of Greek philosophers.
Many are lured here now, not only by the enviable lifestyle, but also by the prospect of working for some of Europe's leading aeronautics, space, electronics, IT and biotechnology firms, which are based on the city's outskirts.


But it's the elegant and lively city centre that really holds the interest.
There's a torrent of youth dashing - or pedalling - through the streets, although an equal number seem to spend their days lounging in parks and cafes, putting the world to rights and becoming embroiled in passionate discussions. When they're not debating, you'll rub shoulders with many of these bohemian types at the daily markets that pepper the city.
Place Victor Hugo is teeming with locally produced cheese, freshly caught fish, fruit, vegetables and garlic, while the Place du Capitole, Toulouse's centrally pedestrianised square, hosts bustling stalls selling cheap clothes, cutting-edge fashion, ceramics and second-hand books - and naughty DVDs.

Manuel
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