One Month in Nice, France
From Mauritius, we took a direct flight to Paris, where we had a quick overnight staying at the Citizen M hotel, which is a convenient walking distance from the airport, and then did an early morning flight to Nice. Adam’s Mom lives in Nice, so we have been fortunate enough to visit her there many times before, and this year the plan was to stay and celebrate the holidays with her.
We had a lovely Airbnb for the month, just off of Garibaldi Square, just inside the edge of the Old Town. The tram runs right to the airport (which is fantastically convenient) and our Airbnb host met us just outside the station next to Garibaldi. We were surprised to see a new sculpture had appeared in the square since our last visit, in August 2022, and our host made it clear that he, and many others, are not a fan of it.
It’s a new sculpture of a lion by French artist Richard Orlinski, who is not without controversy, but I enjoyed how the faceted surface reflected the light from the sun at different times of day.
On one of our first days there, we walked past one of my favourite museums in Nice, the Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre, and I was excited to see that there was an exhibit of the work of Vivian Maier. I remember being fascinated reading about her life story, and her street photography, after boxes of her negatives were discovered and shared in the 2010s.
There is still controversy over the right to her images and it is a shame that her fame came posthumously.
Our Airbnb was a block away from the Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain (MMAC), but we quickly discovered that it has been closed since January 2024 for renovations as a part of the Phase 2 of the extension of the Promenade du Paillon. (click the link to see an interactive before/after vislualization). The Promenade du Paillon is an amazing urban park that cuts through Nice and has been built overtop of the Paillon River. With its closure, the MMAC has taken some of its pieces and installed them in the Palais Lacarais, which is a museum that is typically dedicated to the art and music of the 17th and 18th centuries. So, this collaboration led to some delightful, and unexpected, surprises in walking through the museum.
This glass ladder was a piece by Laurence Aëgerter “Le Songe d”Ovide” as a part of the MAMAC exhibition “L’ombre, le reflet, l’écho”, curated by Rebecca François, in the Palais Lascaris.
I was also intrigued by posters for an exhibit called “ANIMA(EX)MUSICA – La symphonie des insectes géants” at the “L’espace culturel départemental Lympia”. Not really knowing what we would see there, we were delighted to see large scale replicas of insects that had been created from pieces of musical instruments. For each sculpture, on the wall were posters explaining various details of the insect itself, as well as a detailed list of all the instruments that had gone into their creation. Most of them moved, and some also made sounds.
The sculptures were captivatingly beautiful.
The city was busy with people visiting for the holiday season. While it wasn’t the usual crush of people on the beach, there was still a steady crowd wandering along the Promenade des Anglais (the broad walkway that follows along the beach), crowding the streets in the Old Town and filling the “Noël à Nice” Christmas Market in Place Messéna.
The Christmas Market had a steady stream of people, both day and night. Filled with food vendors and rides for the kids, we did take the ferris wheel ride once, to enjoy the night time views of the market, and the city.
There are many museums and galleries to visit in the city, so here is the list of some that we visited: Musée de Préhistoire de Terra Amata (Located on a prehistoric site that was discovered while a highway was being constructed); Le Musée National Marc Chagall (which is a museum largely focused in Chagall’s religious work and is housed in a beautiful modernist building designed by André Hermant in 1969); Musée Matisse de Nice (which also had some lovely pieces by Yves Klein on display); Le Musée Masséna (which has beautifully preserved opulent rooms and a fabulous exhibit, “Nice, Ma Ville, Mon Quartier”, containing historical photos and information on the different neighbourhoods of Nice); and the Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret de Nice.
In the latter, they had some beautiful pieces by female artists including the “Souvenirs de Toros” by Amélie Beaury-Saurel.
We also walked, a lot. We did our usual trek along the water from Nice to the neighbouring Beaulieu-sur-Mer. It’s a gorgeous 10km walk along a seaside trail with beautiful views along the way.
We had a lovely Christmas Eve dinner with family, went for a quick swim in Christmas morning, and listened to part of an organ recital on Christmas Day at the Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate de Nice.
On Christmas Day, the Baby Jesus had finally arrived in the life-size anomatronic creche scene (and, fascinatingly a creche scene is called a Lou Presèpi in Nice) in Place Rossetti, which was just outside the church where we went to the organ recital.
On one day Adam’s mom took us for a walk up to a park, Le parc d’Estienne d’Orves, on one of the hills surrounding the city, where there is a grove of olives, including one that is one thousand years old.
The trees in the park are all still fruit bearing, but it wasn’t clear to me whether or not they are harvested by the city. We also did the short train rides to: the Friday market in Ventimiglia, Italy; Antibes for a wander and to visit their Musée d’Archéologie; Cannes for a day, and in early January we went to Biot to the stunning Musée National Fernand Léger.
The Léger Museum was well worth the trip to Biot. It’s a large property that Léger bought in 1955 with a plan to install his ceramic sculptures in the landscape, but he died shortly after purchasing it. After his death Nadia Léger (Artist, and also his wife) and Georges Bauquier (his assistant and friend) commissioned architect Andreï Svetchine to design the museum that was completed in 1960. It is a beautiful building with a large mosaic on its south facade. The mosaic is built from a study that Léger had done for installation on a velodrome in Hanover. The version on the museum was done by Italian mosaicists Lino Melano and Luigi Guardigli.
As a part of a current exhibition, there are works by other contemporaries of Léger also on display from the MMAC collection including Yves Klein and Niki de Saint Phalle. It was a lovely way to spend the day.
From the sea to the hills around Nice, we wandered much of the city. Some of our favourite spots included: Copenhagen Coffee Lab (for coffee and fresh bread); Cafe du Cycliste (best coffee, croissant and pain au chocolat in the city); Hug Café (pretty good coffee from the roaster [La Torref de Tersen] we went to in Antibes); Maison Tosello (fresh pasta); the daily market at Libération (especially the fresh mushroom guy in the market building on the north east corner); Maison Quirino (fresh pasta and their roasted artichokes in oil); Le Comptoir des Frères (a lovely place for a bite to eat and a nice bottle of wine); Attimi (still the best, thinnest crust pizza in Nice); Hôtel du Couvent (for a beverage in their “Le Bar”, it’s a gorgeous hotel in a renovated [previously abandoned] 17th-century convent that sits on Castle Hill); Les Folies d’Edmonde (cute cocktail bar with questionable music programming); Zitto (a speakeasy with the best cocktails in Nice); Blue Beach (a lovely place, down on the water, to sit and have a coffee); La Claque Café (another cute coffee place in the Old Town); Galaries Lafayette (for your central location and clean top floor public washrooms); almost daily we wandered the Promenade des Anglais , the Promenade du Paillon and along Avenue Jean-Médecin.
For our last week in Nice, we switched to a different Airbnb which had a beautiful terrace. On the first evening there we were treated to a beautiful display at dusk by the European Swallows.
It has been a beautiful month in Nice. We now move to Bordeaux for January, but come back to Nice again in February.