Arriving in Nice was like arriving at the pearly white gates. I don’t want to seem like I’m complaining after going to so many exotic places, but I needed a holiday from the holiday already! At this point we’d been travelling for over a month and a half, already the length of a fairly long regular holiday. And what they don’t tell you about travelling; it’s hard work! I know, I know how it sounds. But sometimes it’s nice not to feel like you have to go somewhere everyday, be a good tourist and make the most out of every minute so you aren’t wasting your money (well, parents’ money). So Nice was a ‘nice’ place to settle down, and most importantly, relax.
Now having said that, we certainly did our fair share of sightseeing in Nice, so much so that this post is going to be broken up into two, to cover the full six weeks. So strap yourselves in, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
To get to our apartment we took a bus, and we got to see a few of the sights. Of course my parents had been to Nice two years prior, without me I must emphasise. For the next few months after their trip they brought it up as often as possible, like in that episode of Big Bang when Wolowitz gets back from space, they found a way to insert it into most conversations. So finally I was to see the famed Nice, and I wasn’t disappointed.
Nice is located next to the sea, with pebbly shores, palm trees and a boardwalk stretching the length of the vast city. A city rich in heritage like most of Europe, it also has a lot of modern features. On one of our first days we stepped outside the newer part of the city where we were staying, with the shopping street identical to every other shopping street in the world (not to say it wasn’t nice), into the Old Town. With no idea where we were heading, I just love that about my parents’ travelling style, we headed up a set of stairs, then another one, until we arrived in a park looking down over everything. As we were taking a relaxing stroll, we were startled by canon fire. After looking around in confusion for the battle that was surely raging around us, we headed back to our apartment, thinking that was quite enough adventure for one day.
We later Googled it, and found we had stumbled across a great tradition of Nice. Essentially in 1861 there was this guy called Sir Thomas Coventry-More, who was annoyed that his wife was always late coming back from her daily stroll on the Promenade des Anglais, meaning most importantly that HIS lunch was late. So naturally he asked the mayor if he could fire a cannon each day at 12 o’clock to remind her to come and make his lunch, and naturally the mayor said yes, no doubt after muttering the 19th century equivalent of, “Women!” One day in 1876 the cannon didn’t fire and the people of Nice were lost without it, I imagine it was chaos as citizens were tardy on mass, so now it has become a daily tradition.
As I mentioned earlier I saw Nice as my opportunity to relax, but my parents had other ideas. Yes, it was time to climb another hill. I was promised a 20 minute stroll at a mild incline. What I got was a 3 hour hike, not to mention a rather uncomfortable return journey, when we found that there were no public facilities within a 3km radius. Mount Boron was not for me.
I decided it would be best if I planned the next outing. We did a day trip to the small town of Saint Paul de Vence, and I don’t want to toot my own horn here (well actually I kinda do), but it was absolutely charming. Despite getting off at the wrong bus stop and having to walk back along the main road for 30 minutes (Dad), we had a fantastic day. What had appealed to me about the description of the town is that it was a famous destination of artists, as is most of the South of France. As we walked the narrow winding streets, there was art gallery after art gallery, each filled with interesting, visually appealing pieces (which Dad remarked was a relief, as he usually has no interest in modern art). Also while we were taking photos of a particularly nice view, we saw a camera crew filming, so there’s a chance that if you watch a French movie (I’m guessing an art documentary) you might see two fools and a particularly dashing young lady in the background.
The next trip’s success I can’t take credit for. Mum organised our outing to Grasse, a smallish town famed for its perfume industry. The Musée International de la Parfumerie is one such place where visitors can learn about the town’s fragrant history. There you will find such interactive exhibits as ‘guess which is the artificial fragrance,’ and ‘create the right ratio of ingredients in the perfume,’ among others, which I enjoyed, although I suspect they were aimed at a younger audience. There were of course also explanations about how perfume is made, the history of perfume going back to Roman and Egyptian times, and a garden filled with plants traditionally used in perfume making.
Next we were booked in for a perfume-making workshop at Galimard, where Mum payed a lesser fee and helped me create my perfume. It was actually quite a difficult and fascinating process. I sat with a ‘perfume organ’ in front of me, with hundreds of scents, arranged into typically male and female smells. For my perfume I had to pick base notes, middle notes (or heart notes, so named as they are considered the ‘heart’ of the fragrance) and top notes, with base notes lasting once the top notes, then middle notes, evaporate. For each I had to pick several different fragrances (up to 5 for the middle and top notes), out of hundreds, remember which I liked, and imagine what would smell good together. The process was actually far more complex than one might think, and people with ‘super noses’, or ‘super smellers’ are paid huge amounts of money (since so few people have their genetic nose capabilities). I created a perfume with many fruity scents (honestly I think I was just hungry) and named it ‘Fruit d’Amour’, or Fruit of Love.
Our final stop on the perfume adventure was a tour of the Fragonard Perfumery, aka one of Galimard’s competitors. There they showed us the perfume making process, traditional tools, the distillery, and where they store everything. The tour cleverly ended in their shop, a subtle nudge to reach for our wallets no doubt. While we were looking around someone knocked over a bottle of perfume, probably worth about 50 euros, after which ensued a rather awkward, silent moment. The store was very nice and didn’t make them pay for it, but we left soon after thinking if it happened twice in one day perhaps they wouldn’t be so charitable.
After Grasse we went to Cannes, famous for its international film festival. When we arrived it was dark, which made the whole sight seeing thing a bit difficult, not to mention we only looked around for about 20 minutes. Despite this I can say with some degree of certainty there’s a beach and some shops. That’s about it. Seemed nice though.
As I mentioned earlier, many artists looked to the South of France for inspiration. One such famous artist was Marc Chagall, who was seen to be “the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists”, and created paintings, illustrations, stained glass, tapestries etc. Since I’m not writing an art essay here (although it kinda sounds like it) I can be honest and say his style doesn’t appeal to me (mon dieu!). I know I was meant to have some kinda of emotional reaction to all the colours he used and stuff, but if you look to closely at any of his art it just looks a bit… is nonsense too harsh? For example in the painting down below, why is that dude touching those breasts (which are clearly not natural), why is that guy’s head on upside down and why is that woman holding a purple chicken? I know people spend years studying the deeper meaning of art and stuff, but what’s a purple chicken supposed to mean? Anyway, I actually did enjoy going to the gallery though. Unlike most of the great painters he actually lived to see the opening of his museum, so that was really sweet, and there was a live string quartet just randomly practising in this room off to the side when we visited, which was a nice surprise.
Before our French course started and we went into school mode, we made one final excursion to the Parc Phoenix, which in retrospect was kinda mad. It was bucketing down rain, and I mean bucketing down, and we walked up and down this street for about 20 minutes trying to find the entrance to this bloody place. You’d think since it was a zoo and typically zoos actually want visitors, that they’d make it a bit easier. Once inside though it was much better, as we could take refuge in the large dome shaped greenhouse, which reminded me of the one at Mt Coot-tha.
After being mocked for having spent a perfectly reasonable amount of time taking photos of pink flamingos (which was very difficult since they were far away and the camera on my phone isn’t great), we explored further and found various other animals including crocodiles, an iguana, some baby turtles, an enclosure that supposedly had a snake in it (or at least used to, which was worrying) and kookaburras, which made me think we really were at Mt Coot-tha.
It’s funny looking back on this day, the calm before the storm (even though there was an actual storm, which in a novel I would say would be called foreshadowing) as we would start the French course the next day. We really didn’t know what we’d let ourselves in for…
Anna Fay On Holiday 