The N Word

You don’t realise how big a problem it is until you spend a week in Nice. You’re looking around at things, and they’re… pleasant. They’re delightful. They’re lovely. And you desperately scrabble for every other possible synonym so you can avoid the obvious joke. As The Belated Birthday Girl said to me towards the end of our holiday, “I have to keep stopping myself from using the N word. [pause] No! Not that!”

So, can we get through a whole writeup of our week away last June without using the city’s name as an adjective? Let’s give it a go.

(I should acknowledge at this point that seven months have elapsed between our Nice visit and this writeup, and there are a few updates required. The biggest one being that BrewDog Nice has just been closed down, along with their other French bar in Paris. Also, assume that pretty much every temporary art exhibition discussed here has finished by now. Other than that, this should all still be relevant.)

As with our Reykjavik trip a few months earlier, just because we’re staying in one city doesn’t mean we’re only staying in one hotel. For the first half of the week we’re in the Albert 1er, which – as already noted – is directly on top of BrewDog Nice. (Um, I mean was.) We were slightly worried about how much noise would travel up to our room, but it’s not a problem – in fact, on our first two nights at the hotel there’s a rock festival made up almost entirely of cover bands (my favourite: Fat Lizzy), and even though that’s literally happening in the park across the road we don’t get to hear a thing. The Albert's a mixture of the traditional and boutique approaches to hotel design, and does the job just fine.

But the hotel we've got for the second half – the WindsoR Art Hotel - feels more like our sort of thing. Each room's been individually decorated by an artist, and The BBG is delighted to discover that she recognises who's responsible for our room: it's Jeong-Hwa Choi, the Korean whose hanging bead work first came to our attention in the Leeum art gallery in Seoul five years ago. There's a sauna which allows us to give ourselves a little treat on the day of our anniversary, and a back garden which is the perfect location for their breakfast buffet. However, it's also the location for their highly disappointing bar, which takes over an hour to make us a pair of cocktails and then effectively says it's our fault for trying to order drinks after 10pm.

Travelling around the city isn't too tricky: there are two tram lines and plenty of bus routes, and once you work out the ins and outs of the Lignes d'Azur ticketing app paying is fairly straightforward. Be warned that if you don't have the app or a travel pass, the only payment option on buses is cash, which we saw baffling quite a few people during our week there. Also, I don't know if we picked a bad week to use the buses, but we were caught out by stop closures and route diversions several times, so don’t put all your trust in whatever Google Maps tells you.

There's plenty going on within the city to keep you occupied. You can get up high using the lift to the top of Colline du Chateau for a smashing view across the whole of Nice. In the opposite direction, Crypte de Nice takes you below street level to get a close look at the small amount of city wall that remains intact, while telling the story of Nice's transition from fortified city to tourist destination. (It's advertised as a French language tour, but the guide obligingly went bilingual once he realised how many English speakers he had in his group.) And because messing about in boats is always fun, you can go for a cruise around the harbour, as long as you're aware that it's the sort of tour where they'll point out where Elton John and Sean Connery's homes are/were. (It turns out that Elton made the local news just a couple of weeks after our visit, because he "a fait pipi dans une bouteille devant le jeune homme". Don't click through to the main article in that post, it's got some sort of dodgy malware in one of the ads.)

It's also worth noting that Nice is fairly close by to lots of other interesting places, and we end up taking four excursions out of town during our week there. The first one is still technically within the city (and covered by our Lignes d'Azur app), but involves a bus journey up the Moyenne Corniche, zigzagging up cliff side roads for half an hour until we get to the village of Eze. Your first impression is that it's entirely full of perfume shops, and that turns out to be accurate: the one concession to tourists is the Jardin Exotique, with loads of cacti and other plants you wouldn’t normally see in the area. We take a bus down one of the other corniches to Eze railway station for the journey back, only to find an unmanned, unsignposted pair of platforms with no departure boards and one of those SNCF ticket machines that's designed like a point and click adventure game console from the 1990s.

This turns out to be good preparation for our other three excursions, all of which require us to use these machines to get rail tickets out of town. We have to piece together information from several different websites to discover that we need a Pass Journee for Alpes Maritimes for one person with one accompanying, which gets us a joint day ticket for the bargain price of 15 euro. This is the cheapest way to get yourself onto the Train des Merveilles, a scenic rail journey from Nice to Tende. The view out of the window is glorious, and if you pick the right train (usually the 0923) you'll get an onboard commentary for the journey in both French and English. It makes it clear that one of the Marvels of the journey is the railway itself, with a couple of spiral tunnels cut into the mountains which allow us to ascend 60m in a matter of seconds. At Tende, there's not really that much to see apart from the Museum of Merveilles, which covers the history of the area from prehistoric times up to the 2020 arrival of Storm Alex and the chaos that caused. Because we've got a day ticket, we break our return journey in the middle for a short stroll around Breil-sur-Roya, where the key feature appears to be a charming lake with a disturbing number of broken crash barriers separating it from the road.

People we know made two assumptions when we said we were going to Nice. One was that there was a BrewDog bar there, so fair enough. The other was that at some point, we'd head along the coast for a visit to Cannes, and that's fair enough too. Mid-June turns out to be an odd time to be in Cannes, as the beaches are all under heavy construction as they prepare for the high season. It's dispiriting enough seeing how many of the beaches in Nice have been co-opted as commercial spaces: that goes triple or more for Cannes, where the low point is discovering that a Google^TM Beach exists. Inevitably, we catch a film while we're there, popping into the Cinéma Olympia to see the opening movie from this year's festival, Quentin Dupieux' Le Deuxième Acte. As we're doing this Monoglot Movie Club style, we have a whale of a time trying to decode its post-modern shenanigans, uncertain throughout if it's a mockumentary about actors making a film, or a fictional story where the characters all know they're in a film. The uncertainty turns out to be the best thing about it, so we've not bothered to do any research since. (It's now available for online rental with English subtitles if you're curious.) Other than that, most of the day is spent just mooching around, with a quick visit to the Musée des Explorations du Monde for its fascinating hodgepodge of ancient artifacts as well as the excellent view from its high tower.

A combination of another one of those rail passes (getting off at Cagnes-sur-mer this time) plus a bus ticket takes us out to St Paul de Vence, a pretty little tourist trap village best known for being reasonably close to Fondation Maeght, one of the most spectacular modern art galleries in France. Here's how spectacular it is: when we get there, we find that because of an accident of timing we've arrived just as six of its seven galleries are closed for rehanging, and we still have a great time. This is mostly down to all the stuff outside the gallery, a glorious sculpture garden with pieces by a veritable who's who of modern artists. Obviously if the weather had been lousy we'd be complaining, but it wasn't so we're not. Although to cap off our misadventures on SNCF, our return journey starts off with us getting a train in the wrong direction and ending up back in Cannes again.

Did you think we could get through a discussion of the south of France without The Belated Birthday Girl popping in to talk about food and drink? Not likely...

Nearly every meal we had on this short trip to Provence could have been included in this, as almost everything we ate and almost every place we ate in was terrific. In the end I have selected one meal from each different area - plus a breakfast, and a couple of honourable mentions - to highlight. One general point of interest to mention is how much overlap with and similarity to Italian food there was in much of what we ate. Possibly not so surprising when you think that the Cote D’Azur is a continuation of the same coastline as the Italian Riviera we visited with Genoa last year, and indeed Nice used to be part of the Kingdom of Sardinia (although never part of Italy). Regardless of history, politics and nations, there seems to be linkage in the cuisines, which is no bad thing.

Firstly, for Old Nice, I have chosen our lunch of handmade gnocchi and local beer at the delightful L’Escalinada. As is the case with most of our meals on the trip and all those I am writing about here, we dined at an outside table, in the lovely Old Nice centre. The gnocchi were excellent. I chose the more familiar standard shape with a rich and tasty tomato and basil sauce. Spank went for the more local blette variant, with an equally delicious gorgonzola sauce. To wash it down, we had a Blonde and a Blanche from Biere Comte. It all made for a satisfying lunch in a great location.

Next, a terrific little local restaurant we found for lunch in Tende on our day trip on the Train des Merveilles. La Margueria had bags of atmosphere and served extremely good pizzas. Spank ordered the aubergine pizza while I had one with courgette. The pizzas came loaded with huge slices of nicely cooked aubergine and courgette respectively and both were top quality. Again, we were able to have local beers to accompany our lunch, this time from La Brasserie Artisinale de Nice: Hopstock Red Ale and NCE to SFO West Coast IPA from the Boarding Pass Serie. Both were good, and went very nicely with our excellent pizzas.

Back to Nice, this time in the New Town. Keisuke Matsushima is a top-end restaurant serving refined French cuisine with Japanese influences. Best of all, there was a bargain (for the quality of food) lunch deal, with a starter and main for 32 Euros, or 3 courses for 38 Euros. We decided on just the two courses. For my starter, I chose the tomato in gazpacho which came with white prawn tartare with aioli and a red pepper granita, while Spank had the Poivron Rouge “Asie”, which was a sort of red pepper mousse served on top of a quinoa and crab salad. Both starters were fantastic: subtle and complex flavours and beautifully presented. We both went for the same main: a fricassee of fresh girolles served with a perfectly cooked risotto and green beans and topped with lovely big flakes of parmesan. We chose to accompany the meal with a glass each of white wine, with a glass of Cotes de provence Clos Saint-Josef for me and a Bourgogne Cotes d’Or Heritage for Spank. The lunch was rounded off with a couple of coffees, which came with beautiful petit fours.

There were a few breakfast places we went to, including a branch of Emilie and the Cool Kids, a chain first encountered by us in Reykjavik, but which originated in Nice: but the most charming was Marinette in Old Nice. We ate in the delightful alleyway, just behind the back of Nice Cathedral. Spank chose the pancakes “Elisabeth” which came with apple, cinnamon, caramel and granola, while I decided just to have a bowl of granola, served with a thick yoghurt and honey. We both had fresh orange juice, served in a jar with a straw, and a coffee, to accompany the breakfast. Everything was tasty and nicely presented. While Keisuke Matsushima was the best of our Nice lunch deals, the 20 Euro lunch at Peixes in Old Nice also deserve a mention. For your 20 Euros you get a choice of cevices, a side and a dessert. Quite a light lunch, but top quality food with fabulous flavours, and terrific value.

Possibly the best meal of the trip was on our side trip to Cannes. Overlooking the harbour on Quai St Pierre, L’Assiette Provencale served delicious food in a great setting, and while I think it was maybe the most we spent on a meal, the prices were not unreasonable given the quality of the food and the prime location. I started with courgette flower fritters, something I had been wanting to have ever since seeing loads of courgette flowers on sale in the markets, which came with a tomato sauce and basil, while Spank chose the gravadlax marinated with beetroot.

Both starters were top notch, but the mains were what really made this the standout meal. Spank had the duck, which was served with roasted potatoes and provencale vegetables, and I had the octopus, huge and meaty tentacles served drizzled with a herby oil dressing. Both dishes were excellent, perfectly cooked and full of flavour. To accompany the meal, Spank chose a red to accompany his duck, Ronan by Clinet AOP Bordeaux Superieur, while I had a glass of the Domaine Roux “Les Cotilles” Chardonnay VDF. Both wines complemented the mains well. We finished the meal with a shared crème brulee, which was also very good, and completed a lovely meal.

One small diversion before the final meal, to mention the terrific cocktails at the rooftop bar of the Hotel Aston la Scala. The unique concoctions we had while looking over the rooftops and along the coast made for a perfect end to the night after attending the concert at the Nice Opera.

Finally, the last meal I want to mention was on our day trip out to the Fondation Maeght. Acting on a tip, rather than eating in the very pretty but highly touristed village of St. Paul de Vence, after strolling around the village we headed back out for lunch at the lovely Vieux Moulin restaurant, which is close to the bus stop for the village. As we still had the museum to visit, we each had just a single course and a glass of rosé. Spank's seafood linguine came with a huge variety of all sorts of seafood in their shells, in a tomato-based sauce. I had the artichoke and langoustine risotto, which was sweet and tasty with artichoke and came topped with a great big langoustine which I demolished to get at the succulent meat inside. The Château du Rouët Villa Estérelle rosé, of which we shared a 50cl bottle – a handy bottle size which we found to be quite common in restaurants in the region - accompanied both dishes splendidly.

Before this trip I never knew I was a Provence and Cote D’Azur kind of person, but with food and drink of the kind and quality we had, I definitely hope this won't be our last visit to this part of the world.

Let's wrap with a couple of bits of Nice culture. The Museum of Photography Charles Nègre only has one small exhibition running on the day we visit, but it's a glorious one. 100 Titres (now closed) showcases the work of Frédéric Pasquini, who specialises in shots that teeter on the border between mundane and surreal so precisely that I honestly couldn't tell you whether they're staged or not. I'm not sure that I want to know, either. To give you an example: there's a shot here of a young boy aiming a rifle, while his proud dad takes a photo while standing directly in front of him. The title? Oedipus Complex. The other bit of modernish art comes as part of a two-site exhibition on Tintin (also now closed), spread across the Museum of Asian Arts (several miles out of town) and the Lympia Cultural Space (much more conveniently central). The Lympia exhibit covers two angles - it's partly a biographical timeline of Tintin's creator Herge, and partly a look at Herge's fascination with modern art. The latter comes across in a focus on references to art in his comics (including many draft pages from the unfinished Tintin et l'Alph-Art), and also in a display of several of Herge's own paintings which were unseen until after his death. They're largely pastiches of other artists, but it's fascinating to wonder if he could have progressed beyond that stage.

Photography and comics - that's not proper art, is it? you might say. Dunno what you think you've been reading here for the last 26 years, then. Still, there's plenty of traditional work at the likes of the Musee de Beaux Arts. At the time of our visit the main exhibition there is Berthe Morisot in Nice (yeah, that's gone now too). Morisot was the first female Impressionist, apparently, a good century or so before Janet Brown. Being married to Monet's brother probably gave her an in into their circle, but the paintings themselves are rather fine, with a focus on some of the harbour scenes she painted while holidaying in Nice. Meanwhile, over at the excellent Chagall Museum, the current exhibit (though not any more) is Chagall: A Cry of Freedom, which notes that he was actively creating art either side of both world wars, and tells the story of how that affected his art during that period.

Nice also has its own opera house, very much in the grand old style: so much so that with just thirty seconds to curtain up much of the audience (including ourselves) are still desperately trying to locate our seats, due to the total lack of signage. We're not actually here for an opera, though: we're here for a concert called Plus Vite, Plus Haut, Plus Fort which is cheekily exploiting the fact that the Olympics will be in France one month later. To celebrate, they've arranged a collection of pieces from three Olympic nations. The home team is providing the world premiere of Pierre Ruscher's Citius Altius Fortius, which gets across the Olympic spirit with a series of alternating sad bits and hugely triumphant bits, which make the whole piece feel slightly American in flavour (think Aaron Copland). Germany's contribution is Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto No. 2, with a star turn from violinist Renaud Capuçon. And then Britain is represented by the Enigma Variations, so we win.

And we finish with the eternal question: what do you do on a Saturday night in Nice? Well, you could go to a nightclub, but the fees for entry and the prices of drinks are horrifying. By chance, we find a free alternative which is much better. Villa Arson is basically a big old art school - at one point I go to the gents to find someone's attempted to wash out their paintbrushes in the sink - and our final night in town happens to coincide with a huge event they're running. Festival Lusosonic 2 is a celebration of Brazilian underground culture, running through the afternoon and the night, with films, bands and DJs spread across their rather spectacular campus.

We're only there for a couple of hours, but we get a few musical highlights during those. An open-air set by a São Paulo duo called Pink Opake channeling the more downbeat end of 1980s industrial electro: rapper O Gringo Sou Eu yelling in Portuguese over the filthiest racket you can imagine (by comparison, his records sound embarrassingly tame): and we finish off with Anvil FX, basically Pink Opake and a couple of associates, who only fall slightly short of the promises made for their set in the pre-publicity. ("...unleash a storm of decibels and pure energy between the rough concrete walls of the building. According to the experts, it should hold.") It's the perfect climax to our week-long adventure on the Riviera: an open-air spectacle in delightful weather with non-local culture and local beer available.

Which was nice.