My retreat in southern France ended last Friday, but the timing and logistics on flying back were a bit complicated. I had some meetings in New York on the following Monday, which made flying back to Seattle just to board a flight twelve hours to backtrack to the east coast seem like a really bad idea. Lucky for me, though, the timing worked out that if I went to Paris, I could see the fireworks on Friday, which was Bastille Day. So I got my flights to New York worked out for a Sunday night arrival, and booked an Airbnb for two nights in gay Paree.
Valence
The cities of the Rhone are more or less all the same, once you get south of Lyon. The light certainly is all the same, a pale yellow or ochre or dirty creme (depending on the time of day) falling on traces of Roman walls and streets of the old quarter where names like “Grand Rue” mark out lanes which narrow into pincer points. Outside of the historic bits, the light remains harsh and yellow, but falls instead on southern French suburban sprawl, boxy concrete houses with roll-shutters on the windows that seem never to open. Finally you reach a ring of big box retail stores with names that make no sense to North Americans (Geant Casino? Piccado?) and then almost immediately the fields and vineyards and orchards begin. There is no gentle shift to the countryside, and only there does the light change into something less angry, something you could imagine inspiring paint and music.