It is hard to say which of the several stop-offs on our French and Italian Riviera was my favourite because they were all quite different. However, Nice was certainly a lovely one. Our hotel was perhaps the smartest that we had stayed in up to this point, the city is well appointed with a lot to see, and the weather continued to be terrific for holiday makers like us.
Also, we were looking forward especially to this stay because we had arranged in advance to meet up with a couple of great friends from our village who had been on a similar rail trip across northern Italy and, co-incidentally, were now in Nice at the same time as us.
Jane had taken responsibility for booking a restaurant and, after a beer in the incongruously named Wayne’s Bar in the old town area, we had a lovely time eating, drinking and swapping holiday stories in Lavomatique. In my opinion this was the best meal we had in France even though the panisse, which we had sampled in lots of places, were not quite the best.
Even though we had been in Nice for only 36 hours, we didn’t hold back on advice about what to see and do. The mix of typical old town with narrow, often touristy, bustling streets, the large squares and parks of the more modern town, and the huge 18th and 19th century houses a little further out, is very attractive. Just walking around to take in the feel of the city was, as it often is on holiday, very rewarding.
At the boundary between the old and modern is Place Masséna and the Promenade des Anglais which have developed into wonderful pedestrianised areas since the 19th century. Unfortunately, the latter became famous because of the terrorist attack there in 2016 by a truck driver who killed over 80 people. Today, both these spaces are wonderfully airy and fine.
We started our first afternoon in Nice wandering through the city centre and then eating and drinking at the excellent Bistro du Fromager in depths of the Old Town.
We perused a fascinating shop called Trésors Publics that Jane was familiar with from Instagram and elsewhere.
We visited and sat in Cathédrale Sainte Réparate for a few minutes and then walked steeply uphill to Parc de la Colline du Château.
This park overlooks the city. It has a dramatic and impressive cascade and gave us great views of Nice harbour, the Mediterranean and the city itself.
There was also another restaurant outside, in which we had another very relaxed drink with, this time, lovely views of mountains. Our rather boozy day was completed at Beer District Libération a tap room which offered the sort of hoppy beer I like best and which is not yet always easy to find in France.
Breakfast at our hotel was a little strange in that it wasn’t a buffet. I felt a bit awkward asking for my normal three course breakfast of stacked fruit and yogurt, then eggs and then a croissant or two which I can usually get by serving myself. But I managed and the pleasure of eating it in the neat hotel garden outweighed any embarrassment.
Afterwards we negotiated the bus transport procedure to travel north to the rather grand-looking Matisse Museum. As expected, there was a queue to get in but we were early and the crowds weren’t huge. It is always good to find out more about artists and what drives them but, in truth, I didn’t enjoy the paintings as much as I had expected having seen pictures of some of his stained-glass windows and abstract art in the past.
However, a positive for me was that we were visiting during a temporary exhibition of Yves Saint Laurent dresses. These exhibits were interleaved among the Henri Matisse paintings to show how the artist influenced the fashion designer. This worked best for me when I could see the motifs in Matisse’s work reflected most obviously in the dress designs.
Around the Matisse Museum are some extensive Roman remains. We didn’t linger because we wanted to get to the Marc Chagall National Museum before lunch. We were fortunate in that the Chagall museum closed for lunch too and so we only had 45 minutes to look around. That was enough; the museum is an attractive, modern building but relatively small.
The centrepiece is a large room exhibiting several paintings from Chagall’s series called the Biblical Message. I enjoyed these very much. There were other highlights such as the mosaic overlooking a pond outside the building and pieces illustrating his sets for opera. It was interesting too to learn more about the man himself some of which I knew but had forgotten. Again though, I was a little disappointed that there were not more pictures, apart from the Biblical Message, similar to those I have seen elsewhere by Chagall.
After all that culture, we retreated to a roof top bar back in the city. I then wandered back through the Old Town towards Parc de la Colline du Chateau to see the nearby Cimetiere Du Chateau. This was built on the ruins of Nice’s old castle and, as expected, there were some absolutely massive 18th and 19th century family tombs and some great views of Nice’s surrounds. I do love a good cemetery!
On our last morning, we popped into the Basilica Notre-Dame which was near our hotel. It isn’t particularly old but was quiet and grand. Jane lit a couple of candles and then we headed off via the hotel and station to Menton a little further east along the Riviera.
