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.
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.
Subscribe
Subscribe to this blog. Get posts by email. CLICK HERE
