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, which has to be one of the most beautiful squares in France. My thumb appears in a video. The gentleman traveler will not subject you to it.



Tiny Place Vieille.


The city's human engines are moving. A thrum is in the air.





From inside L'Eglise Saint Jacques, I see a mom and kid break into a run. School is starting.


The Eglise Saint Jacques. No aisles, no transept. A big ol' Jesuit barn. 


From the outside it's a DMV office. Inside, a Baroque fairyland. A Jesuit trick I first noticed in Lisbon.






A produce stand on Place St. Francois.


A seagull offers a stout defense of Nice's National Theater.


Rue Francois Zanin.

The construction of Port Lympia was huge for Nice. Its construction in the 1800s led to other developments like the Quai Rauba-Capeu joining the old port to the Chemin des Ponchettes. Thriving neighborhoods emerged.



On the closed end of the Lympia Port is the Notre Dame of the Immaculate Conception Church (1853), which is the work of Joseph Vernier, who also designed Place Massena. On either side of it are red ochre buildings that make the church's neoclassical facade pop even more.



Try to enter if you can. It has two dozen of the weightiest columns you will ever see.



Port Lympia is a lovely part of town and the eastern terminus of the No. 2 tram.




Farewells are best got over quickly. This gentleman traveler has to catch a plane. Normally this is where he would offer up "10 observations of this place or that." 

And believe me, he is not at all ready to say goodbye to the generous but twitchy citizens of Nice.

With so much left unsaid and so little time, I offer only three bits of guidance: 

Some of the cafe/bars and independently owned general stores here won't allow you to use a credit card absent a 10e minimum purchase. This isn't a big deal, but to avoid an uncomfortable situation, carry a 20-spot. I took out 40 euros and will be returning with a 20e note.

Please do not leave Nice without trying the pissaladière, left, and socca, right. You can't get them anywhere else.



The third? These babies are only 330 calories each. If you overdo it, you will have what's known in France as a "royal waistline." Win/win.



See you in the spring!

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