Friday 25 September 2015

Nice: We Did Wanna A Holiday In The Sun!


Nice, France, it's not just nice, it's fantastic - everyone's been, including us (that's me and the artist LJ) and by 'everyone' I mean everyone I've mentioned it to since coming back, which includes the woman behind the counter in a Crouch End charity shop who hasn't been since she was a child, therefore expressing surprise that there was a tram which runs top to bottom of the city, or even bottom to top if you want to go that way. And the woman next door, who said she loved Nice. Of course she does, you can't help but love it. It's got a tram. It's next to the sea. It featured in one of the greatest French films ever made, Jacques Demy's La baie des anges (Bay of Angels), in which Jeanne Moreau finally cashed her chips at the casino. Here's the bay photographed by me... 


...despite being filled with rollerskaters and joggers, these days, it retains its majesty, partly because more people still prefer Shanks's pony as a method of transport, which is only right because The Bay was made for parading along at a leisurely pace with the milky-blue-turning-deep Med on one side, the rush of traffic and plush hotels on the other. Here's the Old Town snapped from the roof of Le Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, my favourite art museum in the world...


...an obligatory beach shot...


...that's not Nice...it's Beaulieu-sur-Mer, where we swam a few times before walking along St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat to the little town where a dove wouldn't stop pestering us, desperate for a peck of the savoury nibbles that accompanied the best Martini blanc possible because it had added orange peel. The law states that Martini blancs must be drunk when in France...in our kingdom anyway...and you'd be mad to flout it. I'm not usually negative...


...Nice is famous for it's architecture, especially from The Belle Époque era, but close to where we were staying we couldn't help noticing this modernist masterpiece by Guillaume Tronchet from the early 30s...




...so that was Nice...hard to believe we were there not long ago and now back in chilly Britain. Was it all a dream? 

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