Is Nice still nice?
We thought picture postcards had long been a thing of the past. Do you remember the dreaded trawling of souvenir shops to buy suitable cardboard views of wherever you had gone on holiday? Do you remember the subsequent trips to find a post office and the troublesome business of purchasing sufficient stamps, of suitable value, to get the pesky little pictures back to Blighty before you did? And perhaps worst of all, sitting down and writing them (even if you did use the same message on each one), finding the appropriate address, sticking on the stamps and searching for a letter box, when you could have been sightseeing, sunbathing, strolling down the promenade, climbing a mountain, sampling the local beer or cuisine, or just reading a book in the sunshine? And, of course, the final horror of returning home, having forgotten to post them in the country of origin.
Well, apparently postcards are back. Apparently your children’s children (already more skilled in navigating the digital world than you ever were) now expect their grandparents to go through the whole card, stamp and letter box routine, all over again.
Terroir, of course, believes in computer compromises and we have sent you blog-cards before (from Italy and Sicily). Though we know that you are digitally savvy grownups, we are now risking another set of electronic postcards. You are welcome to show them to any grandchildren you might know, if you think they might be remotely interested.
Greetings from the French Riviera
Is Nice a cliché? Well, Terroir wasn’t able to interview any Goths, Ligurians, Greeks, Gauls, Romans, Byzantynes, Lombards, Francs, Saracens, Normans, the Counts of Provence, the Grimaldis of Monaco, the Counts of Savoy, Turks, French, Hapsburgs, Sardinians, Sicilians or la famille Bonaparte, who all seem to have been involved in the city right up to the 19th century. In 1860, the Duke of Savoie, Victor-Emmanuel II, conceded Nice and Savoie to the French, represented by Emperor Napoleon III (Bonaparte’s nephew; think patron of Haussman in Paris). All this roughly – very roughly – in that order.
Squeezed between the Alps and the Mediterranean, Nice seems to have always been a nice place to relax if you were on the side of whoever was in charge. Napoleon III was keen on railways so, one suspects, tourism started to became a thing - until Queen Victoria and the British medical profession spotted its potential for relaxation and therapy and Nice became, not just a thing, but just huge.
Nice’s most famous road, the “Camin deis Anglés” (in the Niꞔois dialect) was constructed with British money to provide work for the starving poor following a severe winter in 1820 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promenade_des_Anglais). When the French took over in 1860 (and franꞔais became the required language) the Camin was reworked to become the Promenade des Anglais.
So what is Terroir’s take on modern Nice?
Townscape: we liked the quirky urban art - or is it seating for the older or more inebriated visitor?
Modern design: these sleek trams really do complement the city’s architecture as well as enable a huge network of car-free streets.
Beach accessibility: you can pay (below left), or you can find that short stretch of ‘Plage pour tous’ (centre) - a good option for a September dip but probably rammed in summer. Definitely limited if your wheel chair or walking sticks aren’t good on shingle. Nobody stands in the way of the maintenance vehicle, however (right)!
And they never mention the flight path for nearby Nice Airport. So handy for the - pardon, I didn’t quite hear that? - Riviera.
Climate change? The relatively recently re-designed Place Massena is to be redesigned again, to reduce its expansive hard surfaces and increase planting and other forms of climate change resilience. Other city modifications include the punctuation of the Promenade des Anglais with less than lovely shaded sitting areas (although we suspect these were temporary structures to cater for the recent Ironman France event) and some very short and highly maintained, species poor, ridiculousy bright green grass between a section of tram lines). Please don’t tell us it was Astroturf!
Now haute couture should be a hot, and very photographic, topic. It seemed, however, that September fashions are fairly low key this year. Below are a couple of our favourites and a reminder that the French scooter is an all-singing, all-dancing workhorse which enables riders to deliver parcels and take children to school without a whimper.
Of course, we also visited the occasional garden and thoroughy enjoyed a gentle stroll through the park surrounding the Villa Messina Musee d’Art et d’Histoire. It was well planted and well maintained but a delightful art installation gave us the best horticultural fashion advice of the trip. You can just glimpse the yellow framework on the left handside of the entrance (left), with detailed designs below.
We leave you with a couple of political comments, one from the beach and one from an up market hotel garden.
Dear Gran and Grandad - hop you are well. Love from Terroir.