My friends Kim and Heda from Atlanta came to Nice for a week of vacation. We of course, toured Nice, spent time on the beach, took an "impossible" bus trip to Eze and then on to Monaco and spent a dreary day in Canne...
Heda decided at some point that she was long lost nobility from Monaco, so they will be referred to as Princess K. and Princess H. respectively...
| At the Alberti Gardens in downtown Nice... | |
| ...to the market | |
| Old town | |
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Rossini Plaza for an ice cream lunch... |
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I call this the "Blockhead" building... it really has offices inside... it is a regional library organization or something... |
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Princess H. has a thing for shoes... |
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This is a school over near the bus station. Looks like what would be a high school in the U.S., but it is called a Lycee. |
| Day 2... off to Eze in the morning. The info desk in Nice told us we could not catch a bus from Eze to Monaco..."impossible, you have to come back to Nice", then handed us a schedule showing the bus times from Nice to Monaco | |
| Eze, if you have not seen my other pages, is a walled Medieval town with stunning views, narrow streets and no cars. It is now home to artists and shops with a couple high end hotels... | |
| The princesses from the restaurant balcony of Chateau Eze. We got an answer for "Who would wear the local dresses?" | |
| View from the gardens... | |
| More town... | |
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Princess K. with terrances behind her... yes that is Princess H.'s foot... |
| There is a Fragonard perume factory in Nice. We took a tour, only to discover that they only made the soap there, but we got the "opportunity" to sample and buy their entire line of products... | |
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On to Monaco... which has two towns in it's small acerage. Monte Carlo is the "town" and Monaco is the "Rock" the hilltop palace of the Princess and royalty of Monaco... of which Princess H. was quickly becoming convinced she decended from... |
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I feel like I belong here... |
| From "up" in Monaco... the Grimaldi's have ruled Monaco for over 700 of years, it is the worlds oldest unbroken monarchy. The Grimadis too over Monaco in 1297 by impersonating a group of monks (see statue)... once inside they took over. Princess H. has Grimaldi eyes. | |
| Princess H. tries to stir up her subjects to get her a royal condo... | |
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This is a $450 gold toliet brush... just in case you were loooking for one. |
| Some nice sail boats on exhibition. | |
| We ate dinner at this very nice restaurant attached to a hotel... we were under dressed, but it was empty... I think we had at least 5 waiters "Viola!" Great view... | |
| The Princi got a little silly with the status outside the casinos. | |
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We were allowed into the "old" casino, which was surreal... it was stunning, empty and quiet... you could hear a pin drop, and all the slot machines didn't make ANY noise!? I had to give the princesses a quick intro to Draw Poker and Blackjack. Though the decor was jaw dropping we didn't do well here, so we moved over to the new casino where the atmosphere was much more festive and we left about $25 up. |
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Waiting for the last train to Nice... |
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Day 3, Canne... this is about all you can see of the Expo center where the award ceremony is held... |
| Collection of famous hand prints... hasn't really improved much since Neolithic times... | |
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The old and the new... |
| After a short 30min on the beach the storm rolled in and the rest of the day was spent shopping... sorry I didn't take any pictures... | |
| Back in Nice we got a call from a school "chum" of Princess H., who was in town... meet Fred. | |
| We met near old town and walked to a recommended restaurant... don't know the glass is from Biot which we would see later. | |
| After the meal Princess H. tripped on a platform and messed up her little toe. | |
| The next morning (early) Princess H. had to continue the journey to her subjects in Bosnia... so for the rest of the trip it was myself, Princess K. and Fred... | |
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Day 4? Start the morning on the beach... we overheard some facinating movie dialog between a local man and a visting Japanese woman... do you like pasta? |
| Fred suggested a trip to St. Paul, which was a inland town, similar to Eze, full of shops and galleries. | |
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This innocent looking doorway leads to a trap... |
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Fred is feeling the texture of the painting... |
| More St. Paul... as the day was winding down... | |
| I just liked this scene a lot. | |
| We got back after dark, but had a nice long dinner at l'Authentique in Nice. | |
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Day 6? Was spent looking at the glass workshops in Biot and then in Grasse looking into the perfume factory thing again. Fred is "T" for the cologne called "Trek" or something like that... starting with a "T"... in any case it was "trˆ©s masculine" |
| The companion Fragonard factory to the one in Eze... | |
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Ended the day in Juan les Pins, southwest of Antibes, at a kind of Tiki/Beach hut place on the beach.Good food, great sunset, but the service went down with the sun... |