Nice
The role of gentleman traveler requires one to wake an hour before sunrise ― while the quotidian tourist is still asleep ― and set out on foot to Vieux Nice. You are the street sweeper, the brasserie table setter, the backpacked student se précipiter à l'école, moving about town alone, unencumbered by maps and injunctions and standard procedures. Chez moi is three blocks from the beach. A street sweeper on Rue de la Buffa. The checkerboard pavement of Place Massena. No fig leaf for this Apollo. Tour de L'Horloge (1725). Not a church, but an alarm system. There's a fire, we're under attack, et cetera. Looking for justice? This way. A toilet? Right this way. Je vous en pris. Ruelle Halle aux Herbes. Place Halle aux Herbes. Swaying laundry off Place Rossetti. Street signs in this part of town are in both French and Italian. Wonderful names, evocative names. This part of Nice is a poem written in marble and stone. Below is Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate, in Place Rossetti, w...