France 2014: Road Trip to Nice - Part 1

Up to now, we have been taking day trips from our home base of Bargemon, driving from 30-75 minutes out in all directions to visit one or two villages and then heading back home again before nightfall.  To properly tour Nice, Monaco and the coastline in between, we decided to take an extended road trip with one night stay in Nice and the second one just outside the village of Eze, within striking distance from Monaco but with much less expensive accommodations.

We arrived in Nice early on a Friday morning, with the plan to wander around the various sections of interest on our own that day, followed by a guided walking tour the next day to give context to what we had seen.  We started in the Promenade Des Arts and walked south-west along a diagonal stretch of green space and pedestrian streets, through Promenade Des Paillon, Place Massena and Jardin Albert 1er.  This scenic expanse of parkland is full of trees, flowers, sculptures including the huge metal Arc and a variety of water fountains ranging in styles from classical to modern.

It also has an amazing array of playground apparatus for small children including huge jungle gyms built out of wood in the shapes of a whale skeleton, a snail, a pirate ship, a tree house and a pair of dolphins.  There is also an octopus tire swing and a fish themed see saw.   I was too big to try out most of this equipment although I did go for a quick swing on the octopus tire.  Towards the bottom of Jardin Albert 1er, there is a very beautifully decorated old-fashioned carousel.

The Jardin Albert 1er ends at the Promenade Des Anglais, the famous walkway that hugs the coast of Nice, with a boardwalk, beach and the Mediterranean Sea on one side, and luxury stores and hotels on the other.  Since this promenade and the connecting Quai des Étas-Unis span for multiple kilometers, we thought it would be more fun and that we could cover more ground by renting bicycles.  Either I was really out of shape, or the bikes were extremely heavy with not many gears, or probably a combination of both, but the result was a slow, tiring slog riding up hill.  After about 40 minutes, we decided we could walk faster and returned the bikes.  How I miss my own bicycle from home!

When we walked on the "beach", we found that it was not made of sand, but was actually a layer of small stones and gravel.  Granted the water and the views were beautiful, but I don't understand why anyone would want to go lie on a bed of rocks.  Even worse, there were parts of the beach that were roped off and a fee of 15 Euros were charged for the right to rent a lounger or umbrella and sit in this area.

On the other side of the Promenade Des Anglais are many high end shops and restaurants.  There are many beautiful buildings including the Hotel Negresco, which has a colourful sculpture of Miles Davis by artist Niki de Saint Phalle at its front entrance, and the Hyatt Regency Palais de la Méditerranée, a former casino designed in the Art Deco style, whose facade  displays bas-reliefs featuring robed women and sea horses. 

Eventually, the Promenade Des Anglais turns into Quai des Étas-Unis, and marks the start of the Old Town.  At this point, we have visited the "old towns" of so many little villages.  In comparison, the one in Nice is much larger, with wider streets and many of the buildings, while still hundreds of years old,  looked more modern than those in the smaller medieval villages.  One interesting building uses trompe d'oeil effects to blend painted windows, shutters and balconies in with real ones.  There are quite a few churches in the old town, including the one dedicated to Sainte Reparata, a 3rd Century Christian martyr who is the patron saint of Nice.

My dining goals for in Nice included sampling local specialties, including the Niçoise salad, which is one of my favourite salads.   We intended to look for the salad as part of our supper, but for lunch we planned to just munch on various things.  When we wandered into the Old Town, we were pleased to find that we had arrived on market day (on the walking tour the next day, we found out that for Nice, unlike the little villages, every day was market day).  I was so tempted by the zucchini that still had the blossoms attached to them.  I've been partial to stuffed zucchini blossoms every since our trip to Rome.  Unfortunately with a three day trip ahead of us and no refrigeration, this was not going to work.

Instead we found some Socca, which was a large pan of crepe made out of chickpea flour mixed with water and olive oil, and possibly seasoned with salt, pepper or rosemary.  It was sliced up into pieces and served to us in a paper wrapping.  It wasn't be best thing I've ever eaten, but it made for a good snack.

For lunch, Rich had read about a little stand out by the docks that sold another Nice specialty, the Pan-Bagnat.  This was described to me as a Niçoise salad in a bun–not quite, but it was a nice bun with canned tuna, tomato, lettuce, onion, hard boiled egg and potato.  It was a really long walk from the Old Town all the way around to the far side of the docks to get this sandwich.  We did pass by some very nice views of the colourful boats and houses around the harbour.  We saw a woman riding on an electrical scooter and I wished we had one of those.

While we were waiting for our sandwich to be made, we watched a large yellow ship dock in the harbour.  We had previously seen this vessel from farther away and thought it was a cruise ship.  It turned out to be a car ferry that traverses between Nice and the French island of Corsica, taking several hours each way.

On our way to the docks, we passed by a parking lot where owners of vintage Citroen 2CV cars seemed to be gathering for a rally.  The original versions of these cars had only 9 Horsepower and could not exceed speeds of 40km/hr.  They are now considered a French national icon.  It was exciting to see so many of them in such pristine conditions, in all different colours, some with their soft convertible tops rolled back.  Later, we passed some of them again as they paraded down the road.

Then we hiked all the way back to the Old Town, where we had to try the famous Fenocchio ice cream, which was recommended to us by several of our friends.  They raved about the weird flavours that were offered, including Tomato Basil, Thyme, Rosemary, Olive Oil, Avocado, and Beer.  We decided that we could get our old stand-by flavours anywhere, and that we had to try these different ones.  We bought a double scoop of Tomato Basil and something called "Tourte de Blette" which had raisins, pine nuts and swiss chard.  Well, several phrases come to mind when describing this experience.  "Weird does not necessarily mean good" .. and "To each his own", since our friends really liked these flavours but we did not at all.  We tossed our first cup and bought a second one much more to our liking which contained our old friends, chocolate and coffee.

That night, I finally got my Salade Niçoise at the restaurant La Maison de Marie.  I knew ahead of time that I could not compare whatever I got to the salad that Rich makes me at home, where he slices up a lightly seared tuna steak.  I was quite satisfied with what I did get, which was a salad with canned tuna, hard boiled eggs, olives, tomatoes, artichokes, anchovies, celery and fava beans.  I was told by the waiter that this is a very authentic Niçoise salad.  For our main courses, Rich had quail with polenta and I had a seafood pasta which had lobster, shrimp, mussels and clams.  For dessert, we shared a pistachio cream eclair with strawberries.  The food was good and we sat in a beautiful garden terrace.  But the best part was that it was only a few blocks from our hotel, which made all the difference after a long hard day of walking all around Nice.

We actually did even more than this on the first day in Nice, but I'll save that for the next blog.  I'm getting tired just thinking again about this day.