While my post on canine landmines was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I really do like Sainté. When I first started teaching, my students would always ask me what I thought of Sainté. Not knowing the town all that well, I'd say I like it well enough. And I do:
- I'm glad to not be in a village of 500 people.
- I also find that for a town of 180,000 residents, it has a pretty vibrant cultural life. There's an Opéra-Théâtre, more than one theatre, an art house/foreign language cinema and more.
- I find that the city, if not les citoyens, try hard to beautify it: they plant numerous flower beds around town, have made the main town square pedestrian-only, and are trying to encourage transit and vélib use.
4 comments:
Great piece on St-E,can't wait to pay a visit to St-E. It seems to be a very nice little town.
I'm trying to think of Canadian towns of 180,000 or less with as vibrant culture, but none come to mind. I think 180,000 is "metro" Sainté because we have a municipal police force and I read those were only for communes -10,000..
Charlottesville has 175,000 and I find it has a far more vibrant culture!
If I recall, the France 2010 Lonely Planet guide actually includes Saint Etienne, only to diss it completely, saying it is a "dreary place whose only redeemable quality is its museum of modern art."
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