I lived all my childhood right next to that region, and yet, I only got here for the first time as I started traveling. and I've only been here as a passing point.
My school’s French exchange was with a school in Perpignan, and Rivesaltes is twinned with the town where my school is, and (at least at the time) had a square named after the town (but it looks like it doesn’t any more?), so one of the stops on the exchange was to visit
And we didn’t go on the mainline train but on le Petit train jaune, and the views from that were indeed amazing
One of the few times school didn’t completely and totally suck for me