As a designer, artist and photographer, I can’t go anywhere without seeing Design, Art and Photography. Nice, France, complies wonderfully by providing a fabulous draw to my eye. The sights are inspiring and stirring. The things that catch my eye are: the signs of former times, contrasts, lush details, old/new, the hand of the maker, classicism/modernism, typographic forms, light/pattern/color/shape.
I spent two brief days in Nice, alternating between wedding celebrations and city explorations. What’s clear is that it didn’t FEEL like Italy. It felt like a different country, though I was only just over the border. Yes, it looked different… but it felt like a different place, too. I’ll have to ponder this more and put it into words during my next visit.
They’re not kidding! When they call it The Coast of Blue – Cote d’Azur – it doesn’t begin to describe the jewel-toned, intensely saturated blue of the shoreline of Nice, France. Beyond-blue waters. Pebbly shores. Picturesque architecture and a richly-visual old-town. There’s much that’s nice in Nice. I could easily go back again.
My travel partner in Nice was Miriam. We were there a week ago for the wedding of our friends, Glenda and Massimo. Miriam was SO patient as I stopped repeatedly to shoot images of the town (on the mornings before and after the wedding). (Grazie, cara.)
In all my international travels – Central America, Asia, Europe – I have been absolutely enamored of the lush, visual patterning of the sidewalks! Why can’t we have beautiful paving in the U.S.!!!? It adds ART to everyday life!
Look at these slabs of stone for the strip between the sidewalk and the roadway! And cupped for water drainage. Beautiful chunks of rock!
In the heart of Nice, in the Messena square, squat 7 figures of nude men, created by Spanish artist, Jaume Plensa. “These seven characters represent seven continents and the communication between the different communities of today’s society.” They light up at night, in various colors. Again, I can’t imagine such a thing in Seattle or Burien.
A little coffee break from sightseeing.
This chocolate shop was enough to make anyone drop their jaw. I did NOT go in.
Imagine THIS piece of art in the middle of Burien’s Town Square! (It would be a stretch for Seattle, let alone Burien!) Titled “La-Tête-au-Carré-de-Sosno” by Sacha Sosno, the 30m-tall sculpture is actually a building.
Hungry for lunch on Sunday, we followed the example of the crowd and each consumed a bucket of 100 steamed mussels. (Click the link to find out HOW to do it!)
Nice was beautiful, lovely, and private on the side streets. As in Venice, stray from the well-worn-path and you’ll avoid the tourists and see the true soul of the place.
Warmest congratulations to Glenda and Massimo! Congratulazioni! The two were wed on Saturday, June 9, 2012 on the hill of Cimiez, in the city of Nice, France, along the jewel-toned Côte d’Azur of the French Riviera.
It was a fairytale wedding with a nuptial mass at the Monastery at Cimiez, during which the bride laid a special bouquet at the feet of the Virgin Mary.
A small reception followed in the monastery garden. A few hours later, at the Villa Alvorada, there were appetizers, conversation, dancing and a full (and very ooo-lah-lah delicious) dinner on a high hill at Cap d’Ail, France, overlooking the bay of Monaco (which presented an unexpected fireworks display).
Not only was the bride beautiful and the groom handsome, but also so were their parents. The two bride’s maids wore spring green, matching the bride’s rose bouquet. Rice was thrown. Balloons soared, and champagne was poured in celebration.
Glenda looked every bit the enchanted, contented bride, and Massimo had a new-groom-adoration in his eyes for his dear wife.
I wish them countless years of deep love and tenderness, respect and mutual applause. They have begun their lives in the sight of family and friends, and we all wish them well.
Having spent the morning walking all over old-town Nice, on the jewel-toned Riviera coast of France, it was time to eat a bite… or maybe a hundred.
Miriam and I passed many little cafés with people sitting in front of grand, black buckets of just-steamed mussels. It was an enticing choice that we didn’t resist.
When we started eating, I wasn’t paying attention. I’d pick up a mussel in one hand, take my fork in the other, and laboriously work the mussel out of its shell and into my mouth. Who knows how many mussels into the meal I was before I finally saw what Miriam was doing. Duh! She used an empty mussel shell as a sort of mini-tongs to easily pluck the meat out of another shell and pop it into her mouth. It made absolute sense. Clever. Simple. Mussel consumption pared to the essence!
For 12,50 euro per person, we were each served a hundred mussels… or maybe more… plus fries or a salad, and some bread. I could easily have stopped at half that quantity. I felt full for a day afterwards. The mussels were simply prepared, steamed with onion, carrot, red pepper and celery. A light broth remained in the bottom of my black pot, and it was soaked up nicely with crusty bread.
Lesson learned. Thank you, Miriam!
Curious about the nutritional content of 100 mussels, I looked it up and found the FitDay web site and its results. Gee, do you think I got enough protein? Or how about the sodium and potassium?! Or vitamin B12?! Wow. The calories were plentiful, but “only” a quarter of them were fat, and of those only a sixth were saturated fats.
On Thursday, the bus pulled away from a 95 degree day in Milano and headed into increasingly blustery skies in the Valle d’Aosta at the far northwest of Italy. (Find it on the map here.) I shot a few crude images through the dirty, tinted bus window as we rolled along, watching the scenery and the weather change. We went from the corn fields surrounding Milano, to castles and mountainside vineyards.
Today, two days later, on my return trip home from Cogne, the weather had changed and I sat on the north side of the bus to be out of the heat of the sun.
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Some notes from my journal entries to-and-from:
22 Luglio, 1:00
Milano – Lampugnano. (One of the metro stops on the red line and a major bus transfer point).
Heading west to Aosta and Cogne to spend a couple of days with Ewa and Piotr. They were my first new friends here and I will say my goodbyes to them as they’re spending this month in the mountains.
The bus has just pulled away from the station.
From Aosta, I could throw a rock north into Switzerland or west into France. I could pitch it to the top of Mont Blanc. Great to have this opportunity to see another spot in Italy, one of its mountainous regions. This is part of my “Say Yes!” program: say “yes” to what presents itself.
(Late in the ride, this is the closest I got to a view of Mont Blanc, obscured by clouds.)
2:30
As we head deeper into the Valle d’Aosta, the proximity to Switzerland is apparent. The architecture has changed. Rooftops bear flat, gray slate instead of red tile.
(This very old rooftop has lost its distinctive fish-scale pattern as the slate has broken up.)
The mountains are steep at both north and south. Vineyards face southwest on steep slopes.
Castles sit atop high promontories. Lettering has changed to old gothic. I’m sure the language is different, too. The rivers are gray-green and opaque. (Language is the “secret, magic decoder ring” to other worlds.)
Aosta 3:15 Switch buses and then continue on to Cogne, (pronounced CONE-nyay) 50 minutes south, into the mountains. Signs are in Italian and/or French. Houses look like Americans’ stereotypical view of Swiss chalets, complete with decorations of gnomes and trolls. This is a different italy. Imagine how UNlike it is to Napoli and Sicilia!
This is a deep, narrow valley. Houses and farm fields climb the slopes to the north and south of town. An alpine community, certainly.
I think of their having united as one Republic less than 100 years ago (1946). About like binding New York City with Montana: separate worlds without commonality.
(“This way to beds in Europe.” Are Holiday Inns everywhere?)
The “pinch me” part. Along our drive I had been seeing “travel-guide Italy”, scenic, seaside towns, cliffside old buildings, palm trees, polished hotels and trattorias. The statues, the weathered stone and white columns were brilliant against the blue sky we had been given, and were just the sights that make people book a vacation. Incredible. It was all here.
We drove west along the Ligurian Sea route, through Bordighera and Ventimiglia to the border town of Menton, France. We got out and strolled the seaside walk, the streetside markets, the town squares. I heard French all around me but forgot to switch to “Merci”.
Most of the details on this yellow building are painted. Can you tell which shutters are real?
