Exploring Nice
For our last day in the South of France, we figured it might be a good idea to explore the city in which we found ourselves flying in and out. The group thinned out a bit, and three of us were dropped off at Notre Dame. Apparently Nice had its own Notre Dame that, while not as impressive, was at least not burned down. The inside of the church looked different than most I’d seen, with its gothic columns and lack of pews.
I got separated from the others when I went to an authorized apple repair store to try and sort out my broken phone. When I was finished, I walked around the city a bit until I found a grocery store. As I walked down the streets of Nice, I realized how removed I’d been from French people during my time in France. Depending on your view of the French, this might be a good thing. Traveling with a large group of friends had many perks, but cultural immersion wasn’t one of them.
I stumbled into my friends parked at a café eating breakfast. This was lucky since my phone wasn’t working. We decided to walk closer to the stores. We passed through a large beautiful square tiled in black and white like a chess-board. A market was selling soaps and lavender, things that I would have scooped up to buy as souvenirs for friends and family in my previous life as a traveler.
Nothing makes you realize how expensive and frivolous alcohol is quite like being unemployed. As a backpacker it seems hard to justify drinking at all when a couple drinks might net out to be more than your lodging for the night. While the others grabbed beers, I walked alongside the “beach.” The air-quotes are because instead of sand, the beach was made up of smooth rocks. I wondered how many millennia it would take of the ocean beating up against these rocks for it to be turned into a proper beach.
I walked to a lookout point with a view of the turquoise water and Nice’s Old Town. This was the view my mind conjured when I imagined Nice. I sat on a bench and ate a salad and sandwich I bought at the supermarket earlier. It was then that I observed something I’d never seen before in my life. A middle-aged American couple asked a French woman to take their picture. The French woman declined for reasons that weren’t clear. She seemed to be citing her inability to speak English, but in my estimation the hand gesture for “Can you please take my photo” has overtaken “Check, please” as the most internationally recognized sign language. A part of me admired this rude woman for saying no.
I walked back to the beach bar my friends had parked at, where Dolly Parton was playing over the speakers. I waited for everyone to finish their drinks and dragged them up to the #ILoveNICE sign for an obligatory group photo. I showed off my climbing skills by scaling up to the “L.”
Excellent use of levels if I do say so myself.
There were only three of us left as Jon, Becky, and I said goodbye to Vouli, Lou, and Thiloni. We noticed a stone staircase near the cheesy sign and made our way up. The view got better and better as we ascended. We were walking up to the Parc du Mont Baron, which grants its visitors epic views of Old Nice and the ocean. The last thing we expected to see was a waterfall, but it made us feel like we went on a real hike instead of ascending a ton of stairs in a major city.
At the very top there was a man on the accordion playing “Despacito” we angled our way through the other visitors to grab some pictures of the views. After loitering for a bit and walking down, we realized the man was only playing Despacito. Repeating a Justin Bieber song on the accordion must violate the Geneva Convention.
We walked down a different set of stairs that led us into Old Nice. From there we opted to go to the MAMAC (Musée d'art moderne et d'art contemporain”). The cool thing about buying a ticket at MAMAC is they give you a ticket that’s good for 24-hours to many of the other museums in Nice. The museum has a huge section dedicated to Yves Klein, someone I was not familiar with but was born in Nice.
The exhibition while we were visiting was on Op Art, not to be mistaken for Pop Art. As I am want to do, I made myself the center of some of the op art pieces.
For our last night in France we decided to enjoy each other’s company and eat at the house. There were empty places at the dinner table due to some of the day’s departures.
I slept through my alarm the next morning, but there was no way I was going to miss this bus. I moved quickly to get to the bus stop, but started a full spring when I saw the bus coming around the corner. It was early! I was this close to slapping the side of the bus like a maniac. An older woman on the bus started to make conversation with me, when she realized I couldn’t speak French she apologized. She helped me figure out the stop I needed to get out of for the the airport. It was a nice moment considering the bad rap French people get.
After 2 months in countries with varying fluencies in English, I was looking forward to my next stop: London.
A must for history junkies