Nice in Nice

France is so much better than Italy in almost every respect and I feel so much more at home here. I’ve been to France several times before but you really notice certain things after a month in Italy. The hotels are much nicer with beds that are actually comfortable, the hotel breakfasts are much better and far more suitable for my needs, the cities cleaner, the accent better, the bread is a million times nicer and much more agreeable, there are a lot more public toilets, the trains are much better and train stations are setup to actually help people with staff roaming around directing people instead of standing around having a smoke and talking on their mobile phones. The French employ staff with the specific job of just standing around, talking and smoking thus freeing up the other staff to do some work .The only areas where France loses out to Italy IMHO are the coffee, which is much worse than Australian coffee, the pasta, the gelati, the shopping, the 80’s, quiz shows, the people aren’t as friendly and also that it is much more expensive than Italy. That’s not a lot but when weighted they are significant. 

On the train to France I was preparing myself to make the jump to French mode from Italian mode and kept saying to myself, “must speak French now” over and over and listening to the announcements and conversations around me in French in an effort to immerse myself. Then the train stops and the guy next to me asks in French if this is the last stop, I understand, I go to respond with “oui” and then “si” comes out. Its always tricky changing languages, especially when you’ve got basic Italian in your head. The guy says, “oh, grazie” and walks away! The worst thing I did when arriving in Nice was go to an Italian festival in town. Here they had all the Italian words for the food with everybody ordering in French. I was so confused I had to leave before my brain exploded.

Nice is the beginning of my Stranglers/biscuit tour of France. The Stranglers singing a song Nice in Nice and I have to say this is very true. Sadly there were no Nice or Monte Carlo biscuits in this part of the world. Nice is the biggest city on the Cote d’azur and is really the California of Europe. The sea here is this amazing blue colour that you just don’t expect making Cote d’azur true to its name. The beach itself is full of rocks and pebbles so isn’t as nice as a Californian or Australian beach. Nice attracts people from all over the world, many of which are very beautiful. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve come from Italy to France or just because of my own personal tastes but French women are stunning. I’ve already written 50000 word essay’s on the subtitles of European women but where they win out isn’t just in how they dress and present themselves its in the subtle use of body language. It may be an over awareness of eye contact of my part compared to all other non verbal communication signals but it is very European to look at people. German and Scandinavian women like to hold their stares, Italian women stare for half as long and then look away forcing you to do the same but then they come back with a counter stare to see if they catch you looking back but French women do a subtle glance that lasts an instant. If they like what they see then they do another subtle glance. One must play this game when in Europe for its lots of fun! A word of warning, don’t ever play this game in Australia because you’ll just get a lot of dirty looks and women rolling their eyes at you.

Nice was a region that was fought over by the French and Italians for many years but was actually its own region for a while and part of the house of Savoy. The Italians wanted it but when Italy was seeking unification it needed to attack Austria and the French agreed to help in exchange for Nice. They foolishly gave it up. As a result Nice is a little bit of Italy in France. The food and culture here is very Italian with several differences. The specialties of the region are fish based foods as well as the salad nicoise. Many of the dishes are combinations of basil, garlic, pesto, tomato and possibly onion all of which are my evil enemies. As much as I love this part of the world I have vowed to never return because the food was too much of a struggle and would advise anyone on a low FODMAP diet or with intolerances to fish, fructose or gluten to avoid the Italian and French Rivera’s. Europeans don’t understand food intolerances and many of these sauces are made en-mass so they won’t be able to take things out.

As for Nice the thing to do is take a walk down the beautiful avenue des anglais. This is a seafront boulevard whereby one can walk along the beautiful ocean on one side and admire the blue sea as well as the wonderful Art deco buildings on the other side. Nice hasn’t always been like this and it was the industrial revolution that bought the English to Nice. All that pollution drove people away from the cities when they got sick as the doctors thought that sea air was good for people and so they came to places like Nice to recover. However people only ever came in winter! The women liked to look at the beach at the time but didn’t want to go on the beach and so they developed the promenade along the beach for this very reason. As time went on the hotels were built. After World War II people discovered that if they went out in the sun for a while they could get a suntan and so people started coming to Nice in summer. Why it took people that long to figure this out probably relates to the amount of clothing people used to wear. Nice had a reputation as a place to be throughout the 20^th century but as the century continued it just grew and grew and now it’s not only a playground for the rich and famous but it attracts tourists of all ages from all over the world but especially America. Many movie stars and the like have houses in this area. Nice also has a growing IT industry but if one wanted to experience the real France this isn’t the place to come because it does feel artificial at times.  

Allan and I kicked our time off with a bike tour. We were on time for a change but this group of Americans coming off a cruise ship had trouble getting there and we waited an hour for them. The tour guide was a very sweet Irish women and she infused her commentary with trivia although I stole her thunder because I knew the story of Isadora Duncan who died in Nice after being strangled by her own scarf when it got caught in the wheels of a car. As luck would have it, it bucketed with rain later that day meaning it wasn’t so nice in Nice and it became a good opportunity for laundry. Nice doesn’t have a lot to do and my favorite pastime wasn’t people watching along the promenade but something much more exciting. It turns out that the Nice airport is built on reclaimed land just outside the city. When the planes come to land they fly low over the water and turn and head for the airport. It’s fantastic to watch planes fly so low, head towards the water and then land. It’s better than San Diego airport! They even have planes landing and taking off at the same time. By my calculations the planes often flew within a kilometer of each other. In Australia the Herald Sun makes a headline story when 2 planes fly within 100 kilometers of each other. I guess it’s possible to fly closer!

From Nice I made a little side trip to Monaco. I had originally intended to stay in Monaco but when I saw the hotel prices I decided against this. There is no such thing as a cheap hotel in Monaco because they want to keep the riff raff away! As it’s not far from Nice it would’ve just been a hassle traveling to another city so close and this enabled me to get a discount from my hotel in staying in extra night. Monaco as a city has some stunning views but is a complete waste of time in every other respect so I’m glad I didn’t stay here. It’s just full of spoilt little rich people that sit there on their expensive boats all alone drinking and smoking probably feeling completely dissatisfied with their lives. You see people driving their fancy cars down the streets wearing their nice clothes and fancy sunglasses but I really can’t see the appeal of the place other than it being somewhere to make rich people feel good. Here they can be treated by royalty as they spend lots of money. For the tourist all we seem to do is wander around the hilly streets taking photos of the views, walking the grand prix circuit and wondering what all the fuss is about.  

In Nice Allan and I parted ways as planned. The trip has had its up’s and downs but what happens on holidays stays on holidays and I’ll put all that behind me now and move on. I left Nice and took a stunning train ride down the French coast to Marseille, France’s 2^nd oldest city. I came here for 1 reason only, to hear the French accent. One of the things you get taught when learning French is the differences in the accents between regions but everyone’s favorite is the Marseille accent. As a lover of the French accent I needed to experience this for myself. The accent is reputedly a little like a song, as if they are singing when they talk. My first few interactions in this place where quite difficult because I wasn’t used to the accent but also because I sadly don’t have a natural ear for French and need to work hard at interpreting sounds. I have to say I didn’t think the accent was anything special, if anything they speak too slowly and this creates new problems because words which I know don’t registrar because they are dragging sounds out that I’m not used to. The city itself has a reputation for being dirty and not all that nice despite recent efforts to improve it. I would have to agree with this reputation and found the city completely unappealing. It’s a fusion of various ethnic groups and socio economic areas scattered throughout the inner city which creates various different food smells and cultural experiences so I can why some people would love that but this isn’t for me.

I was disappointed with this because there were 50 other cities I wanted to come to but I settled on Marseille mainly because its was a TGV hub and due to its proximity to another city I wanted to see, AIX-en-province. I’ve always wanted to go to a city that shares it name with a bad UNIX operating system! (NERD JOKE!) I thought perhaps not many people knew about this city but I turned up to find 25 buses filled with American tourists in the main square. I’m pretty good at distinguishing between American tourists and the French locals. The American women buy all the local clothes and try to look French but if they’re not talking its their lack of subtle body language that gives them away. Aix-en-provenance (pronounced X-en-provenance) is one of the nicest cities in France. The old town is just a series of lovely tree lined streets with beautiful old buildings. There are squares, churches and the most wonderful collection of food shops. There isn’t much to do but wander the alleys and browse but as I’m relaxing I didn’t mind so much and sat in cafes and drunk lots of coffee. Unfortunately the quality of French coffee is quite poor and I think what happened was that coffee improved in the rest of the world and France got left behind. So you can imagine my joy when I find this Australian coffee shop selling flat whites! I couldn’t believe my luck and I get to chatting with the guy in Frenglish with more of the ish then Freng and he spent 6 months in Brisbane as a barista and really liked the Australian way of making coffee and wanted to bring it back to France. He was very disappointed with the quality of French coffee and is doing his best to improve things. Here I hoped to run into Ritchie Benaud who has a villa in the south of France and I’m sure would hang it in such a marvelous town but alas I couldn’t find him. The only downside to this town is the lack of public toilets, I found 3, 2 of which didn’t work and many people are forced to urinate in the streets. I reckon anyone opening a public toilet here would make a killing!

My next stop was Toulouse which was really just a stepping stone to my next destination as it was on the TGV line. It took most of the day to get here on the train so I didn’t have a lot of time but I liked what I saw. Toulouse is just one of those really nice medium sized French cities that has a few things to see like the river, Pont Neuf and some lovely old buildings but doesn’t attract stacks of tourists, although they exist.  It’s the perfect place to practice your French because as there aren’t many tourists here there is little need for English. The accent here is wonderful, much better than Marseille and everyone speaks so clearly and at the right pace such that I couldn’t believe how much I understood of the conversations going on around me. I would definitely come back here and indeed I’m thinking from now on I pick destinations that aren’t so touristy because I’ve pretty much been to all the touristy places I’ve wanted to see, there are no more on my list.

Lourdes was the town I really wanted to get to which is nestled high in the Pyrenees and quite hard to get to. The town would be insignificant if it wasn’t for this women, Bernadette Soubirous who had a series of apparitions of the virgin Mary in the 1850s. It is widely believed that the water in the grotto where she had these visions has healing properties and many people claimed to have been healed by drinking and or bathing in the holy water at Lourdes although Bernadette herself never made these claims. It has since become the 3^rd most popular pilgrimage spot for Catholics after the Vatican and some place in Mexico. Edith Piaf was cured of some blindness as a child here and for that reason always were a cross. It is difficult to quantify the number of people that have been cured by the holy water or if the water itself does cure. Scientific analysis of the water has been done and it turns out the water contains a number of things that are better for you. Perhaps when drunk in large quantities it has a healing affect but who really knows with these things.

I always wanted to come here and drink the holy water if I ever felt I needed to be cured of anything and so for me it was multiple food intolerances. The medical world can’t help me so maybe this would do the trick. Lourdes was packed with people, and noticeably sick people, old people, disabled people, the needy that we often neglect in our own society and who are far worse off then myself. There are many wheelchair people here. Surprisingly for a tourist town that attracts people from France, Italy, Spain, UK, Portugal and an emerging tourist enemy – the Dutch, people speak surprisingly little English. This is unusual but probably due to the large numbers of Italian and Spanish tourists it isn’t so vital and so French came in handy. The grotto is quite a big place and people are everywhere, and there are church services all over the place because there are also churches everywhere. There are 2 in the grotto; there are numerous chapels and this great underground basilica which seems as big as Telstra Dome. So I tried the water and put some into bottles to take home. The water was really nice but the only noticeable effect it had on my was a serious case of indigestion. I think I was intolerant to the holy water and it certainly didn’t cure me of any intolerances as it just made everything worse for a day.  

The Catholics believe that the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ was actually perfect and as such she holds a very special place in the church. Anglicans dispute this but they have other stuff that is maybe a bit sketchy. Consequently Catholics actually pray to the virgin Mary, something many Anglicans call Mary worship. Mary is huge here and at night there is this mammoth procession led by a statue of the virgin Mary which is followed by anyone that wants. Thousands of people join in and I would have to say the French do a very good job of traffic control. They have people in all the right positions (some with clipboards!); they cordon off areas and make it very clear where to walk. If these apparitions had have happened in Italy it would have been a debacle. Staff would be standing around smoking and talking instead of directing people and there would be jams everywhere. The procession is sort of a prayer walk – liturgy done in 6 different languages, including Dutch. The reason why they get so many people is because each person gets to hold a candle. Catholics love candles and the church makes a lot of money from people in candle sales. Some tour groups even came with pre-made candles that were so big it required 2 or 3 people to carry them. However it doesn’t matter what the walk is for, if you get to hold a candle then I’m in. I’m sure if churches around the would wanted to increase their attendance at prayer meetings then all they would need to do is promise candles and numbers would swell. I had trouble lighting my candle and asked this French women to light my candle but in the process I put her fire out and in the end this Dutch lady came to the rescue and showed me how to hold it. I presume she was Dutch cos I couldn’t understand a word she said.  

It turned out on this trip one didn’t need to book as many things in advance as I realized. It turns out that the internet is a big scam in this regard. Hotel websites receive allocations of rooms to sell from the hotels and can create the illusion hotels are filling when in actual fact they aren’t. The same is true with the pre-purchase of train tickets. You can always buy one on the day at the station, it may just cost more. The most important thing I’ve learnt on this trip is that my iphone has its own GPS system independent of any phone/wireless network. This means if one downloads the map into the phone’s memory one can then navigate to their hotel from the train station and once I learnt this I never got lost again. Combined with my gift for finding wireless hotspots this has been priceless! So I’ve 1 week left in my holiday and I’m taking it easy, surprising I know. There isn’t much planned this week. Anyways for those used to the blog you may have to begin withdrawal planning. I’ve been suffering football withdrawal symptoms. This week I had a dream I was on the MMM commentary team and gave feedback to the team on their commentary which wasn’t at all appreciated!