Sizzling Beach 3: Nice and Monaco

From Cannes to Antibes, we were stuck in traffic for about an hour on Wednesday afternoon because the GPS made us do the scenic route. At St. Paul we were so close to Nice, but since it was already 8pm and the sun was setting, H and I decided to leave that trip for the next day and go back to camp in Cannes.

At the shower area I saw some young barflies primping for the clubs, or maybe for a yacht party... meanwhile, I was getting in my jammies and brushing my teeth. My feet were aching and I felt too old to party. While H was getting water to boil the rice for dinner, he caught a glimpse of a sleek but low-key black sports car parked next to the faucet, the kind preferred by loaded but distinguished gentlemen who like the speed but not the showing off. Fanning his fingers up and down as if they were on fire, I could see H was lusting all over it. It took him fifteen minutes to get water, and he was just ten steps away from me.

Through dinner he sat in his hammock, trying to figure out what that car was doing outdoors and I gave him the most inventive scenarios (this time, leaving out the zombies). At breakfast, he was still going on about it. And so it was with great relief that we finished breakfast, dismantled our camp, and finally made our way to Nice.

I made the mistake of judging Nice by the looks of the Promenade des Anglais, the long boulevard next to the sea lined with palm trees. I felt like I landed on Will Smith's Miami music video... wait, did somebody say MIAMI ---?

Hells, yeah.

But to be quite honest, it was a nice beach. I'd been here and in St. Raphael in 2009, except it was February, so there was nothing to see. Now there's a host of things to see, but cannot be posted.

Azure blue.

During winter, H made me watch my first subs-free French movie on TV. It was about a gambling addict and a girl who had a strange attraction to him and it was set in Nice; so it was funny to see this place as it is in summer, like, fer realsies.

But it's not just about the beach and the expensive hotels.

Nice has been nice since antiquity.

A fresco inside the oldest palace in Nice, the Palais Lascaris

She borrowed her name from the Greek goddess Nike, and her city dates back into antiquity as one of the oldest colonies in Europe.

The old city is compact. The restaurants spill not just to the sidewalk, but take over entire streets. The pretty facades of some unlucky buildings can only be appreciated by looking 90 degrees up.

And without even going to the ruins at Cemenelum, one need only look up to see (with a bit of imagination) slight traces of the Roman roots of the locals.

Road signs in French and Nissart, which is closer to Italian.
Just like Occitan is actually more Catalan.

Laundry hung out to dry, something I saw more of in Italy than anywhere else in France.
(Disclaimer: I haven't seen too much of the Alps, so there should be a margin of error here.)

The kind of windows one would see more of in Tuscany than in Provence.

Domes, very Italian. Mosaics, I would grant, are a bit Spanish-Moroccan.

Just like artists go to Tuscany to study the Tuscan light, the soft glow of Nice has inspired the likes of Chagall and Matisse.

We were inspired by something Niçoise too.

Socca restaurants take over the entire street. Sorry, cars.

In fact, H lined up for about an hour just so we can get this authentic piece of Nice. But c'est la guerre! That's war!

We were entertained by the waitress announcing the orders to the cook as if she were singing. Eventually, after finishing the rest of my meal, we finally got our socca.

I know, it doesn't look like much but, c'est bon ça -- like a very thin and slightly crispy hotcake made with chickpea flour. It's a specialty in Nice that's so popular, sometimes you cannot find it after one in the afternoon because it sells like... well, like hotcakes.

The other gastronomic specialty is the pissaladiere, an onion-only pizza with some olives, allegedly introduced to the south of France by the Italians during the reign of the Avignon popes. (More about Avignon later, maybe if I feel like it.) This was a little hard for me to get, because it looks like a pizza but then you bite into it and you get this salty-sweet and very onion-y flavor. Hey, I can't like everything.

 The last thing to do was to get some olive oil soap from Marseille. And then WE ZOOMED OFF!

Au revoir, Nice!

Substituting France for another playground of the rich and famous in the riviera.

A place so small but so glamorous that even its tunnels are interesting to Japanese tour groups...

(Actually, if you're a racing fan, this tunnel would be familiar to you too.)

And made H want to speed again. I knew he was thinking of the black car in the camp site all day!

H's "Grand Prix" face. He actually asked for this picture to exist!
BTW - the lane on the left is for sports cars. Notice the Jag in front.

So here we are, safe and sound.

Monaco.

To be continued in "Lombardy Cares For Me"

Related Posts: A Year in France Celebration (The Aftermath)
                        Sizzling Beach 1: Yes, We Cannes!
                                      Sizzling Beach 2: Antibes to St. Paul