No Place in Particular

Once while driving a truckload of furniture across the New Mexico desert (long story), I was struck by the thought that any of my surroundings--spectacular mesas, rock formations, cliffs, canyons--would be a major tourist attraction if (by act of mischievous or bored god) it were picked up and transplanted into Piedmont North Carolina. But in New Mexico...it's just what you see from the parking lot of a Texaco off I-40 near Gallup.

This picture isn't of any particular attraction in Lyon. I actually took it out back of some sort of technical high school on the hillside below Fourviere, where I was shortcutting straight downhill from the cathedral rather than taking the crazy switchbacked medieval-era cobblestone streets back down into the old city. But it struck me as very beautiful and very French somehow, the kind of place where people would have outdoor weddings if it were back home in Chapel Hill (and if it were June rather than late November). But here? There were some high school kids hanging around smoking cigarettes, and I believe they may have actually snorted at the dumbass touriste Anglo as I snapped a picture.