Nicer in Nice

Trip Start Apr 04, 2007
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Trip End Oct 22, 2007


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Monday, October 1, 2007

After solid rain throughout Italy, we appear to have arrived in France in the middle of a late-summer heat wave, and between the sunshine and the palm trees along this part of the French Riveria, you could almost believe you were on a tropical island holiday! Since we were both feeling in need of a bit of a holiday from the ups and downs of backpacking, we decided to take it pretty easy in Nice and rest up a little before heading on around the rest of France. Our hostel turned out to be a ways out of town, but reachable by bus at least, and with great views out over the city. It is a huge converted monastery complex, but there is very little of the original monastic values left these days - mostly, it is populated by a very young crowd of Americans on 'student exchange programs' (I put that in quotation marks since we saw very little academic related work going on), and the downstairs of the hostel was a huge bar with one wall done in stained glass, I guess as a slightly ironic tribute to the original owners of the place.

On the plus side, it had a great buffet breakfast and almost fanatically zealous staff who would come around every morning plying you with maps, brochures and information about bus routes, to ensure you made the most of your time in Nice. It wasn't totally conducive to our initial plans of lounging around and reading, but we did take them up on it and headed out to see some of the town. Our first stop was the Matisse museum, a fascinating and diverse collection of works by Henri Matisse, who apparently came to Nice for a visit and then never left. The museum was set in a park with every street named after famous jazz museums, (Duke Ellington Ave, Miles Davis St), and we wandered through the olive trees and picnicking families to the hill above where the enthusiastic hostel staff had told us there was an 11th century church and monastery. The church was beautiful, with centuries-old frescoes covering the ceiling, mostly depicting the monks themselves doing various pious and saintly things - I guess when you're the artist, you can paint yourself however you want! There was also a rambling cemetary attached, with some beautiful marble mausoleums and crypts with sculptures and intricate ironwork.

We wandered for a while longer before heading back to the hostel to relax with a 1 Euro beer, watch some rugby on the big screen in the bar, and plan our bus route to Monaco for the next day, with the help of the zealous map-wielding staff!

All our best from France

Dan and Gabrielle
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