In addition to that there are loads of libraries for Python which are written in C, which gives you speed in the right moments.

I think the readable code thing is really really important, too. I can understand other peoples code quicker and learn more about the actual algorithm unlike in C++ where I wonder half of the time about syntactical non-sense and optimizations for certain compiler targets.

Then again, Python and C++ target very different groups and I like both languages for certain things.