Reflections, observations, and vignettes
Beauty is hard to define
I like how international Nice is. I feel less noticed here, or less foreign, than I do anywhere else I go. There are so many people here from so many different countries that it really is the proverbial melting pot. I know Chien-hui feels less Asian. Or maybe the better way to put it is that being Asian here is not an anomaly for her like it is almost everywhere else in France. Hers is just another kind of face among many kinds in Nice. There is racism everywhere in the world, as we all know, but it doesn’t feel as pronounced here and it’s easy to get around. The key is to commit to being French first. You can be anything you want, and your identity will be honored and respected in France, if you are French above all else.
The French are extremely environmentally aware and this shows up in myriad ways. The car I rented recently got 7,000 kilometers to the liter, it seemed. For the most part they frown upon washers and dryers here as energy-wasting machines, and if you do happen to have one, it will be a combination machine. It will take a month to dry your towels but that is better than the three hours it takes wash a load of clothes. Plastic is kept to a minimum here. There are no bags given at the stores unless you pay for a paper bag, but almost everyone here just brings their own. Recycling is widely observed and even in the middle of the countryside there are recycle centers on the sides of the roads where you can bring and separate your glass and other recyclables, and it seems everyone does. The streets in most cities are relatively clean given their age and size, and graffiti is kept to a minimum, barring Marseille, where the graffiti is so rampant that it looks like New York City circa 1976. The notorious dog shit that France was known for is still here but no longer in epidemic proportions. We frequently see people picking up after their dogs everywhere we go. Not everyone, of course, so we advise you keep your eyes down when walking.
So, I am absolutely baffled by the sheer number of smokers in France creating what certainly must be an air quality emergency. They love the planet, but not the air surrounding it, is the takeaway. I can’t exaggerate this. Apparently, it’s also still 1976 here in this regard. Self-rolled cigarettes, unfiltered cigarettes, those skinny little cigarettes that women like, vaping, it doesn’t matter, nor does it matter the age of the person. It seems everyone here smokes and they do it at all times. I’ve seen very old people vaping, which is alarming, and I don’t know why that is, and I think I saw a baby in a stroller with a pinch of tobacco in its fat little fingers rolling a cigarette while being pushed along in a Scandi-designed pram. I don’t like to use the “H” word but in this case I will: I truly hate smoking. In France, it is inescapable. The long fingers of poison reach under doors and between windows and it ambushes you when you’re walking on the streets scratching the inside of your lungs with a fork. You’re not allowed to smoke indoors here, thankfully, but that just means that people will just go stand by the front door and smoke in groups where physics takes over thereby defeating the law. We’re in a second floor Airbnb and this is not nearly far enough above the street to avoid the wretched and pervasive acrid smell of invisible cancer clouds meandering their way up between my windows into my apartment at all hours of the day and night.
By far, the worst are the street cafés, and this is the most devastating aspect to the entire epidemic. You’ve seen the photos of the brasseries and cafés in Paris, Nice, or even the tiniest mountain villages in France. The people backlit by the sun, lingering over a coffee or a glass of rosé in no hurry to leave as they chat, enjoying the weather or the people watching, and the fine French cuisine. But I’ll tell you what they are really enjoying is their 52nd cigarette of the day. All of them. Simultaneously. For us, it’s unbearable. We never get to have this café experience. Instead, we go inside, and we try to sit as far away from this storied French cultural stage set as we can possibly get. Often we’re next to the kitchen and even that’s not far enough. If you’re French, what’s not to love? You and your countryman, or babies, can sit together in any city or town in France sipping coffee, endlessly puffing away, while you disapprove of the people walking past, or Macron, or Emily in Paris, or the Brits, or the sun. But please, be sure to bring your cloth bags to the Carrefour and, sorry, there are no plastic bags available for your courgettes. How does an entire people famous for their wine, cheese, and perfume continuously and relentlessly attack their palates with toxic taste bud killer?
Now that I have that out of my system, I do want to mention just how stunningly beautiful it is here on the Côte d’Azur. Although, I guess I did that plenty in my last post. The benefit of slow travel is that we can develop a routine and really get to know a place over several long weeks. We’ve been doing just that here in Nice, discovering neighborhoods, finding shops, markets, restaurants, coffee shops and gaging their potential and long-term viability. Another wonderful thing about this region besides our ability to walk most everywhere is the phenomenal tram and train system. Earlier this week we decided to spontaneously hop a train to Antibes for the day. For €18 round trip, the two of us sat next to the window in a clean train car and watched the sea go by. Forty minutes later we were meandering through the streets of this ancient seaport town until we reached the seawall. From that perch, we were given unrivaled views back towards Nice and behind it, the snowcapped Alps. I followed the jets with my eyes as they gently descended, conforming to the shape of the Baie des Anges, until gently touching down onto the runways at Nice airport.
Behind and above us stood the Picasso Museum, housed in the former Château Grimaldi, a castle-like structure perched above the sea with 180-degree view of the bluest Mediterranean water you can imagine. Of course, we had to pay our respects, although, I admit that I’m not a fan of Picasso. There are some artists I just don’t connect with regardless of their fame or notoriety. Warhol is another. There are certain pieces by Picasso that do move me, Guernica comes to mind and his first Cubist pieces, and even some of the blue period paintings. He was so prolific, creating more than 2,500 pieces of art in his lifetime, that odds are there will be some winners. Anyhow, the building alone was worth the price of admission with its thick white walls, stone steps, and endless bedrooms converted into tiny galleries. It turns out that they show other work at the Picasso Museum and just my luck, they were showing the Spanish artist, and life-long friend of Picasso, Joan Miró. This guy, I like.
By the time we got off the train in Nice and walked the few blocks to our apartment, it was only 5:00 p.m. We booked a reservation for 7:00 p.m. at a very nice Italian restaurant close by and then promptly fell asleep. Squiggly lines and color bobs danced in my head, but I did not wake up until well past the dinner bell. Yeah. That’s how it goes when you slow travel fulltime.
After letting our legs rest yesterday we decided to tackle the famous castle hill here in Nice, officially known as Colline du Château. This former strategic stronghold sits high above Nice harbor with what has to be the best view of the city and the bay. Every culture who has controlled Nice since the 1100s has used this stone hill as a fort, but the actual walled castle itself was destroyed long ago, ironically by the French, but Nice wasn’t part of France then. To get up to the top, there are a bazillion stairs, and you, my dear readers, know my feelings on stairs in Europe. Oh, well there was also an elevator that jettisoned you up through a hole in the rock they carved for said elevator, but no, that wasn’t for us. We were taking it as a personal challenge to climb ever heavenward and besides, we made a lunch reservation at an exceptionally nice restaurant right along the Promenade for later in the afternoon as our reward.
We first had to walk for about 20 minutes from our apartment to get to the base of the castle and as we sat there at the bottom of the first set of steps catching our breath, and rebuilding our strength, not yet knowing what lay in wait for us, a family with two young girls passed us and began their trek upwards. As they took their first steps, the younger of the two girls who was perhaps nine, yelled out, “Okay, people, let’s get to work!” The way she said it let me know that A, it wasn’t the first time they had visited the castle hill, and B, Little-Miss-Bossy-Pants was going to be the CEO of some enterprise one day in the future. Her parents and her older sister were visibly over her by the look on their faces as she double stepped up the stairs well in front of them.
So, we began. And as we climbed and climbed, at each switchback we were presented with an even higher viewpoint in which to take in Old Nice, the bay, the distant hills, and the Mediterranean, which looks like an ocean, though intellectually I know it is only but a sea. When we could go no further, we were welcomed with the fine spray mist of a waterfall cascading over rocks and falling with tremendous force and sound, surely man made, and thankfully so. As we looked up, there above the falls were faces looking back down at us. Damnit. This meant more stairs. We looped around and found the final ascent up and when we finally reached the apex, I audibly laughed when the whole entire grand view was there before me. I have used the word stunning already but it’s really the only word that I can draw upon to describe it. From the photo below you can see what I mean. There is the bay with its absolutely blue-on-blue color, the triangular shape of the Old City in the foreground, and the rest of the city climbing the hills. Worth. Every. Frigging. Step.
I had a glass of rosé champagne when we got to Restaurant Renée to celebrate as we peered out towards the ocean from our hideaway in the back of the restaurant.