[erdo]

Well, this is true. Some of those things are also true of London though.

Re the admin (to get set up on the health care system etc) everything does need things like original birth certificates etc. And I spent several days going in person(!) to an office somewhere to deal with it (but that's mainly because my french is not really good enough to deal with things like that on the phone easily)

I think if I was on my own here, loneliness would have been a real issue until I had decent conversational french. (I moved with my family though, so it's less if an issue for me)