J'y suis jamais allé

We leave early but still get stuck in traffic at the Place de la Concorde. He swears in French and Italian, making resigned gestures with his hand stretched out through the open window. We drive along the river banks, through the tunnels, Paris disappears in the rear view mirror and I pretend I'm never coming back.

At our street, cafés and shops will open without us, tourists will get lost on their way to the Jardin des Plantes. The downstairs neighbor will scream at his wife and she will threaten to leave him, only we won't be there to hear it.

The A6 takes us south and changes names just after Lyon, a while later we're outside Avignon and slowly start heading east. Provence is an open field of flowers and insects, the landscape keeps changing over undulated spaces in yellow and green and then, suddenly, the ocean. It's as blue as I remember it and we step out of the car for the first time in hours and the fresh air hits my face with salt and sand and microscopic drops of water.