A farewell to Nice....

pics by Malc & Liz - words by Malc
Oct 6, 2016
9 min read

We have left Nice and are off to Montpellier en-route to Barcelona.

Nice was a great place to visit. We both really enjoyed it here. It's so clean and well cared for. The architecture is quite beautiful particularly along the sea front.....we'll the older buildings are beautiful anyway. The styles are everything from La Belle Epoch era, through Art Deco to modern and everything in between.

I love the wooden shutters and wrought iron balconies of the apartment blocks.

The beach, being small pebbles rather than sand is a bit of a disappointment to me but it's still very nice. Nice is still a centre for the Jet Set - movie stars and the rich and beautiful - but far fewer than in the good old days of the 60's and it mainly the wanna be's trying to look the part who are here now.....except that some of the Jet Set from the 60's ARE still here and still bathing topless. Not a pretty sight, but good on them for having the confidence to keep on going. Again I will spare you the photos.

Quickly moving on......museums and galleries.

Here in Nice you can visit a number of museums and art galleries and expect to pay anything from 5 euros up to get in to see one of them. Currently there is a "special" on whereby you can pay 10 euro for a 48 hour museum and gallery pass and can get into any of about 14 or 15 establishments for the one price, within 48 hours.

There are a few galleries and museums that I wanted to have a look at so we bought the 48 hour ticket at the Matisse museum, the first place on our list. The museum is in a large pink painted building in the middle of a park filled with olive trees. Here kids play football on the grass among the olive trees and older men play boules on the dirt under some bigger trees near the park entrance. Several games are going on at once here. I take a couple of photos and watch for a while. There's quite a skill in playing boules - you have to get the flick of the wrist just right to give your ball just the right spin, speed and angle. There is also a lot of luck involved due to the uneven ground and tree roots.

To be honest with you, the Matisse museum was a bit of a disappointment. I'm not sure what I had expected, but there didn't seem to be many of Matisse's famous pictures on show. One room just had a lot of pencil sketches...actually doodles would better describe them. I have done better myself.

So after we'd had a look around there and called into the archaeological museum next door to see the roman ruins outside in the grounds and bits and pieces inside in display cases (part of the 48 hour ticket) we then set off to find the "theatre of photography and the image" which was the one place that I was really looking forward to seeing.

Well, we walked for a long time and finally found it. Not only was it closed......it had also moved.....into the old town where we had been the day before (so the note on the door said). I had checked their website the day before and there's no mention of them moving. It still shows the old address and opening times. More than a little annoyed we decided to try the next one on our list, which was the museum of modern and contemporary art.

More walking!

We arrive at the modern art place and although we have our 48 hour passes we still have to get in line with the rest of the visitors and wait our turn to get to the cash desk, flourish our tickets and get waved through There are a group of 5 middle aged women in front of us in the queue though and you have never seen such a bunch of ditherers in your life.

There's a security guy standing by waiting to check their handbags and to get them to put any bigger bags into the free lockers at the side of the cashier. One of them turns her back on the guy and starts talking loudly to her friend. Another of them gives him her bag to put in a locker then wants it back again to check if she had any messages on her cell phone.....he waits patiently..... for ages as she scrolls through screen after screen. Meanwhile we wait and wait to get to show our tickets.

Finally they move on and we are waved through, bags checked, locked and on our way in 30 seconds. "Mercie!" the security guy says to us because we were so quick....he nods and grunts in the direction of the 5 women and shakes his head in despair.

The modern art museum is actually very, very good. Even Lizzie enjoys it and art museums are not usually her thing. A local artist - Ernest Pignon-Ernest - born in Nice in 1942 has turned out some very good and thought provoking pieces. He does a drawing or painting - very lifelike - of people in situations of strife - life size of sometimes a bit bigger - takes it out into the public arena (street location) and pastes it to a wall and then photographs the work and peoples reactions or lack of reaction to the work.

There were 3 large rooms of his work, plus books to be bought in the museum shop. I didn't buy a book, but did take a number of photos of his work. Yes photography, as long as you don't use a flash, IS allowed here. Thumbs up from me for that.

There were other artist with work on display here including one who's name escapes me for now, but his idea of art was applying paint to the bodies of naked females and then rolling them on a canvas. Not a bad hobby really......and if you can get away with it, why not?....But is it art?

I'll throw in a smattering of photos taken in the gallery here to give you an idea of the art on display here in the modern art museum.

The next day we're off again to try to find the new address of the Photography gallery we'd found had moved - the day before.

We check out Google Maps for directions as we have the new address from the note pinned to the door. (I know, I know....after all our experiences with google maps I should know better).

Off we go - Google Maps as our guide. We find the location....but can't find the building. There is no signage anywhere to indicate that the Photo Gallery has moved into this street. We walk around a few blocks up and down the narrow streets.....nothing, not even a hint of where it may be. Utterly dejected we head for the sea front to search for two smaller galleries which are part of the 48 hour deal. Unfortunately we do find these ones. The art is.....well crap to be frank. One is full of senior high school students attempts at art. I think that their art teacher has the policy of strange is good. There are bits of stuff torn photos and postcards strewn across the floor for one exhibit. A broken vacuum cleaner and a line of refuse as another. A large photo of what looks to be a naked male junkie with a rather inflamed appendage (you'll be pleased to know that I didn't get a photo of that). Some very badly made drawers out of wood. Bewildering stuff.

The other gallery has a single piece of "art" in it, is entitled "cloud" and consists of bits of rubbish collected from the beach - displayed on shelves at one end of a very large room. At the other end is a video presentation about the rubbish (in French of course) and hanging from the ceiling is a large fishing net lit from various angles by spot lights - none the wiser we leave and cheer ourselves up with ice cream.

We then check out our map and guide which tells us that we're only a block away from the cathedral so off we go full of hope.....to find it locked.

We make our way slowly back toward our apartment and call into a park with a 1900's merry-go-round. It's in great condition but there's only one kid riding it (his dad is jumping on and off to take photos too) - we sat there eating our lunch and he was the only child in all that time. It's going to be a pretty lean day for the proprietor me thinks.

Not having a very successful day on the tourist trail we think that we might hire a couple of the nice shiny blue bikes that we see on the bike stands along the beachfront. Cheered up at the thought of a nice ride along the seafront we locate one of these blue bike stands. After a half hour trying to follow the instructions on the boards here which tell you how to pay and how to free the bikes from their locks. (It seems to involve credit cards and cell phones and code numbers ). Defeated we decide to call it a day and retire to the apartment to drink! This is one activity that we have become Masters in on this holiday.

Sunday comes around and we have a piece of info to cheer us up. The Marc Chagall museum is free on the first Sunday of the month (it was not included in the 48 hour ticket). This being the first Sunday of the month - it's our lucky day. We get a bus so far and walk the rest and are at the museum in no time. Sure enough the museum is open and it IS free. Awesome!

Also good is that it has a lot of large Chagalls on display AND photography is allowed. We wander round looking at the paintings. Very primitive and child like art but amazing use of colour. We both genuinely like his work. Lizzie gets me to take some photos of a couple of paintings in particular with a view to getting them printed out - blown up large for the wall at home.

We leave the museum in a happy mood to find that there is a cafe right there in the museum garden selling crepes. Can it get any better?

Has our fortune changed? It seems so.

The crepes are divine and the cappuccino to wash it down is rich, strong and creamy. In very good spirits we head off for a long walk up hill past the Matisse museum, that we'd visited earlier in the week, to make a visit to the Monastere de Cimiez. It's free to go in and the ceiling is gorgeous. Its a really lovely old building. The courtyards of the adjacent building are quaint, quiet and peaceful. There's a small museum here too but it wasn't open today.

Its a lovely old monastery perched on a hill top and the gardens are also free to wander through. It's a nice spot, but the views of Nice are not so nice from here as the direction we are looking in is northerly over the dried up river bed, factories and highways. The good views are south of here. Apparently Elton John is the owner of a yellow coloured large house on the opposite hill top which does have nice views of Nice. It's so high up that there is an observatory a few hundred metres further alond the ridge where he lives.

We sit in the garden enjoying the sunshine and eat our packed lunch. Liz has been great at preparing our daily packed lunch. Mine is a baguette stuffed full of cheese and ham and salad with a good dollop of Dijon mustard. She has prepared herself a mixed salad in a plastic container. Looking at all that greenery I think I got the best deal.

After lunch we take a look in at the Jewish cemetery next door. No photos allowed inside so I take one from the gate before going in.

Immediately inside we get into conversation with a couple from Scotland. They seem really nice and friendly but boy can HE talk. Most of his sentences began with "a couple of years ago" - and you knew it was going to be a long afternoon. His wife waited - patiently to begin with and then less so as he regaled us with "interesting" stories and bits of information. Never one for using one word when a hundred will do....once he got into his flow there was no stopping him. Really. There was NO STOPPING HIM!

Eventually somewhere in the cemetery we lost them and head out into the street, back down the hill and through the park near the Matisse museum, because we knew there was a toilet there and it had been a long day between toilet breaks.

Lizzie went into the ladies and I waited outside for her. When she emerged who am I deep in conversation with? You guessed it - our friend from Scotland. She stopped dead in her tracks and looked around for another exit from the park - too late though as she'd already been spotted.

"Oh hello" she says. "Where are you heading next?"

"We think we'll catch the bus back down the hill" he says....."the bus stop is this way" pointing to the left.

"Oh OK" says Lizzie " have a nice holiday - we're going that way" pointing to the right. Grabbed my hand and marched me off.

"What were you thinking - talking to him again?" she reprimanded me.

My reply was "he saw me waiting for you and asked me which way to the Matisse museum and next thing I know I'm hearing about his 4 week holiday in Benidorm".

So while our new friends were getting a ride back into town on the bus.....we were walking....again!

But it did give us a chance to look at some of the nice houses and apartments on the walk back into town and once more along the seafront. You see much more when you're walking.