The plan was to drive to Nice on Saturday and spend an entire day and night there. It was about a six hour drive from Vicenza, and once we reached the water near Genoa (look on a map for where I’m talking about) we hit the most amazing mountains that ran right into the water. I didn’t get a lot of pictures because I was just staring with my mouth open for most of the drive, but here’s one that’s decent:
Before we reached Nice, we stopped by the Fragonard Parfumeur, a perfumery named after the famous painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard and established in 1782.
They have the factory we visited in Ese (above is the entrance), a store and museum in Grasse and another store in Paris. We were able to get a tour of the factory and see how the perfume is made. The first thing we did on the tour was test our sense of smell. Here is the board of 8 different scents we had to identify:
I had a serious headache by the time I finished sniffing all of the little bottles, but it was a fun exercise :). Here is our lovely tour guide talking about the laboratory behind us and how certain people had the job of the “smeller,” where they would literally sit there and smell stuff all day long to see what would make a good perfume:
Fragonard also makes scented soaps, and we caught some of the employees carving the soaps into little ducks:
Either she hates her job or she just hates American tourists (she’s French so my guess is #2).
Here’s a woman filling up some of the scented lotions they sell:
And then we bought some expensive, smelly goodies and walked out to the parking lot, which looked like this:
After the perfumery we spent a good two hours driving through the mountains to reach Nice, and once we did we slowly descended down one of the mountains and onto the coast.
Since we were near the water we were hoping to have some nice, warm weather, but we weren’t so lucky. The temperature wasn‘t exactly beach-worthy, so we just walked along the beachfront, called the promenade des Anglais, and took a few pictures:
That's Russ and his daughter Caitlin, frolicking on the beach :).
We stopped at one of the outdoor cafes for lunch. Here's Melissa (right) and Maritza at the table with Le Chateau (the hill in the center) in the background. There was a fortress that was once at the top of the hill and it also holds the largest cemetery in France:
Nice is at the center of the Cote d’Azur (I’m guessing azure, or blue, coast) and is very much a Mediterranean city. They have a huge flower market we walked through next:
I’m not sure why everyone kept calling it a flower market, because not only did they have flowers but fruits, vegetables and a ton of seafood:
Maritza sweet-talked the waiter into letting us take this picture because he was about to run it off to one of the outdoor tables.
As we walked out of the flower market we came into one of the main squares in the city. Here’s one of the upscale department stores, Galeries Lafayette, on avenue Jean-Medecin. Ultra-pricey:
And look at this thing:
That’s their mode of transportation around the city, it looks like a spaceship or something. We all kind of stared at it in awe for a second, because it literally parts the square where people normally walk and shoots down into another street. I can't believe it doesn't just run people over at every turn.
After the main square we reached the Vieux Nice, which is what they call the medieval part of the city:
This was about the time I fell in love with Nice. All along these narrow walkways were vendors and artists and people just hanging out. Very bohemian, very happy and very chill. People would just come up and start conversation. Maritza and I met a very attractive gypsy who gave us a rundown of the city of Chicago once he found out where we were from.
By the way, I know that sounds weird…attractive gypsy, but I swear to you there were so many beautiful men in this city. Not even just the men, the women were gorgeous, too.
So, back to the Vieux Nice…we shopped around for a while and wandered the streets. I was definitely in that “I’m so loving being a traveler right now, immersing myself in another culture, loving the atmosphere…."
And then right about the time this picture was taken Melissa got her camera stolen. I’m talking seriously ripped out of her hands with the guy running down the street. The three of us had our cameras out taking what turned out to be a very pretty picture, but one of the three of us will never see hers! We were all so stunned that it happened the way it did, we just watched him run down the street. Needless to say, it kind of put a damper on the “loving the culture” part of Nice and brought us all back to reality.
It turns out Nice is notorious for petty crime. Daniela, my Italian teacher, visited with her husband and literally had everything stolen out of her car during the hour they spent at lunch. And it was parked directly in front of their hotel, which had a 24 hr. doorman!
Ok, so this entry is getting crazy long, so I’m just going to put up the rest of the pictures. This one’s for Mom, because it’s a statue of the Three Fates! I had just finished reading the book and then Maritza told me that’s what this statue represents:
And I couldn’t walk by a Westie without taking a picture :) :
This is in one of the parks (love the wisteria):
And then another shopping area. They had some of the coolest clothing stores, and a ton of long, flowy dresses. I was in heaven:
Then we went to a Cuban place for dinner (I know, Cuban in France, but whatever). They had salsa dancing, and I had a blue drink with little flavored marshmallows in it…it was yummy:
And here is the next morning in front of the Eglise Orthodoxe Russe (Russian Orthodox Church). Nice was the place to be for Russian aristocrats back in the 19th century, so Tsar Nicholas II commissioned a church in 1912. It was beautiful:
Then we got back on the road and made our way to Monaco!
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