imminent
only arriving now bc I made pasta and forgotSaint-Etienne (countryside)
I was here this summer, on a little tour around some of France before I moved here in October. I went to some big name destinations: Paris, Lyon, and to a lesser extent, Grenoble. But my favourite place was actually when I went to Saint-Etienne for two nights. I stayed with a friend who I'd met very briefly in Colombia (she was the friend of a friend, truth be told, we'd spent about a day together). I told her I was going to be passing nearby (Lyon is about an hour away) and asked if she was around and she invited me to stay with her. So I met her friends, who showed me around the city. We made brownies, and I helped when the dad of one of her friends turned up with a van packed full of furniture that needed moving into the basement. We had dinner in a park and then a different friend invited us to his place where we drank whisky and played guitar.
The next day we went, with the friend from the night before, out to her parents' second place in the country side. We went biking, and had lunch with them, and set up a hammock she'd brought back from Peru. In the evening we went back to her home in the city and cooked together and I played guitar and little piano and we talked for a long time. This, again, is not something that can be separated from the place for me. Had I been on my own, I think Saint-Etienne would be a drop in the ocean that is my memories. But as it is, I still recall the tranquility of that idyllic afternoon with a slightly wistful smile.
(The image is of an old monastery (on top of the hill in the background) that we cycled up to. I chose a wideshot to give a sense of what the place feels like.)
