The people of Valbonne may not wash their dirty linen in public, but they sure don’t seem to mind drying it in everyone’s sight as this photo, taken during our stroll through the village at 7:10 this evening, shows. Actually, this has nothing to do with Valbonne; what you are looking at is a classic example of the typical Mediterranean clothes dryer: a few lengths of rope outside one’s window, a handful of clothespins, and some laundry fresh out of the washing machine’s spinning cycle: still very moist but not sopping wet. Most village apartments are simply too small to accommodate both a washing machine and a dryer, and so people have to make do. This system is undeniably energy-efficient and lends a certain stereotypical old-world charm to the village streets.