Pink City

They say Toulouse is the most beautiful city in France. La ville rose, it’s called, because of the characteristic brick that makes up most of the historic architecture, as opposed to the more familiar creamy limestone of most other French cities. After the lovely, but bland, sameness of Bordeaux surrounding areas, it’s groovy to see something new. To be fair, though, it’s not really pink at all. It’s red.

It’s red brick, the kind we see all over the northeast United States and yet, nobody’s calling Philadelphia the most beautiful city anywhere. Somehow, though, that humble American building material looks downright chic here au France. Toulouse may not only be one of the most beautiful cities in France. It may be one of the loveliest cities in the world. C’est magnifique.

We’re staying right in the city center, catty corner to the opera house. In fact, there was an older Swiss guy eating beside us at the brasserie last night who told the waiter he’d flown in specifically for a concert. As always, eavesdropping on strangers speaking a language I don’t understand yields few results. Thankfully, my French-speaking wife was also listening to them because she and I ran out of things to say to each other approximately 16 years ago. She translated for me.

Last night, I left the hotel to wander around because Martha was dealing with some annoying errands that followed her across the ocean, so she encouraged me to get out by myself and report back. I picked a street at random, following it past restaurants and shops of every kind. Japanese pancakes? Yes. A Club Med store? Yes. Competing eyeglass shops facing each other across the street? Yes - those eyeglass shop owners must hate each other. After a short-ish stroll, I arrived at the Garron, the river that flows right through town. I considered crossing one of the bridges that span the river but that seemed like a lot of work just to, like the chicken, get to the other side.

Instead, I found another looping street within which to lose myself and wandered the streets, waiting for the charming buildings to fade into rundown tenements or blocky apartment buildings. Reader, the charming buildings did not fade! It was charm all the way down. When I got back to the room, she asked how my walk had been. “This place is fucking great!” I shouted.

I took a surreptitious photo of the older Swiss gentleman eating beside us. Here he is.

Now look, I’m not an idiot. (I’m an idiot.) I know that Toulouse, like any city, has bad neighborhoods and problems and crime and whatever other problems infect large metropolitan areas. Starting at the city center, and having the deflated stamina of a 53-year-old man pretty much guaranteed that I would not encounter any such things. So I know that whatever I saw last night, and again today during our couple’s amble, is Toulouse’s best version of itself. Even so, I was surprised at how vast the “good” part of Toulouse seems to stretch.

Last year, when we lived in Rome, it was pretty easy to walk fifteen or twenty minutes and find oneself in a rougher part of town. You could tell because the pizza would be served with a switchblade. In Toulouse, though, my walk last night and our further gamboling today did not introduce me to any part of the city I would be nervous about entering. Everything we’ve seen here is lovely, lively, and clean. That’s what we kept saying to each other as we walked: “Look how clean it is!” Why is it so hard for Americans to keep our cities clean?

We paused to admire the massive Saint-Etienne Cathedral, which sort of looks like two cathedrals smooshed into one. I’m not sure why, but it appears to be built in two distinct architectural styles. The Toulouse tourist website says that it’s both “Southern Gothic” and “Northern Gothic.” I don’t know the difference and I don’t want to bother looking it up because cathedrals in Europe… yawn.

Look at all that lush brick. This is the cathedral. It’s sort of hard to tell from this photo but you can kind of see how the front part looks different from the back part. I did note a distressing lack of flying buttresses. The only reason I say “distressing” is because I like my old cathedrals to be fully buttressed and when they’re not, it makes me sad.

The reason I even mention it is because they’re doing some work outside of the cathedral to remove autos and turn the street into a pedestrian walkway. “More of that, please,” I said aloud to nobody. Toulouse is a very walkable and bikeable city; it appears that the city is trying to make it even more so. What a difference a lack of automobile congestion makes!

American cities are, obviously, supersaturated with cars because automobiles are our birthright. But so is Rome. So is London. There were howls when congestion pricing went into effect in New York, but I bet you won’t find a single New Yorker who bemoans the dip in car traffic. City life is so much sweeter when lived sans voitures.

Because I do this everywhere I travel, I checked out local real estate postings. It seems like one could get a decent apartment in a good location here in Toulouse for around €1500. (Might be something to consider if the new administration deports you.)

Strange that a city can be so awesome yet also so completely off my radar. I’d heard of Toulouse, but mostly because of the artist from here. As such, I will always picture Toulouse Lautrec looking like John Leguizamo the same way I will always imagine Alexander Hamilton looking like Lin-Manuel Miranda. As for the city of Toulouse, I will probably associate it forever with Japanese pancakes (which sort of looked like fluffy crepes stuffed with bonsai trees and not at all like John Leguizamo) and pink brick, which is actually red.

Travel teaches us that the world is bigger and smaller than we know. Every place we go reminds me of other places, but no place we go feels quite like any other place. Toulouse is a Roman-era city and it reminds me of Rome, but it also reminds me of the West Village in New York. Yet it feels very French but also a wee bit Spanish, located as we are, just across the Pyrenees from España. If Martha and I travel further afield – say, to Asia – will we still find those touchstones of familiarity? I don’t know. Or will a village in Ghana call to mind a village in Connecticut? I have no idea. Hopefully one day I’ll get to see.

In the meantime, it’s Monday in Toulouse and we are enjoying our day. Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day to all my American readers. It’s a good day to choose happiness, I think, which is the choice I have made for myself. The sun is out now and I think I will go enjoy it before it sets again.