With more than 700.000 inhabitants, Toulouse is the fourth largest French city. Its main industry is aeronautics, for it's the place where Airbus planes are assembled. Lots of students too (around 100.000), working on three different campuses (Law & Social Sciences, Languages & Literature, Sciences).
There are three things that I find really cool about this city:
- It's not too big so you just need your feet to hang around the whole town center.
- It's not too small so you have anything from cybercafes, to gay clubs, to night restaurant, to skate shops, to theme bars, to alternative concert venues, etc, etc.
- It's awesome. Most of the old buildings and a lot of recent ones are made of characteristic south of France pink brick (Toulouse nickname is "La Ville Rose", ie "Pink City"). Really awesome.
Human-sized, sunny and lively, it's a pretty good choice if you are to live in France.
By the way, on September 21st 2001, the AZF chemical products factory exploded in a loud bang. It the biggest chemical accident ever in France.