Another lovely day has dawned in Nice and Larry is busy taking pictures out of the windows of our apartment. I am declining to include the picture of our laundry drying on the rack in the kitchen, but the palm trees pictured above are right out of our window. The lovely purple tree is in a park about two blocks away. We have yet to figure out what kind of tree it is althought it bears a resemblance to bougainvillea. Any guesses?
Our agenda for the day including taking in the flower/produce market in Cours Salaya (and an obligatory walk to the sea to make sure it was still beautiful - and it was). There were even people on the beach and in the water already at 9:30 in the morning.
The flower market runs 6 days a week in Nice and is pretty spectacular. To the right are pictures of produce (Larry always seems to fondle the red peppers?), mushrooms (now he is just looking), and flowers. The prices on flowers were pretty reasonable. A beautiful bouquet could be had for $20 and a dozen long stem roses were just $8. We didn't buy any because we are leaving in just 3 days and I would hate to have to throw them out.
We had planned to then walk around the old town and visit some of the souvenir shops. There were a couple of specific things I had seen that I wanted to pick up...but alas it was too early. It was nearly 10 am but many of the shops were not open yet. They keep very strange hours here in Nice!
We headed home, stopping at the grocery for lunch supplies. After a delicious sandwich at home, we took the bus up to Eze, le Village (that is really how it appears on the maps!). It is an old perched town built smack on the top of a mountain overlooking the sea just above Beaulieu (where we had visited the lovely Kerylos villa just the other day). The bus ride up to Eze was spectacular and it was a remarkably clear, crisp day. The picture below was shot on the way up from the bus window.
Since the village is on top of a mountain for defensive reasons, we started to climb. We had come here once back in 1998 and found that the top of the village was in the clouds, so we didn't need to climb all the way up. With todays clear skies, we had to make it to the top to see the views.
The streets are all inclined and they twist and turn all the way to the top. Part way up there is a very exclusive hotel/resort called the Chevre d'Or. The bottom right picture is taken looking down on the expensive cars in their lot (all Mercedes and better). It also shows, another floor or so below the cars, a HUGE chess board sitting on the lawn. Unfortunately, no one was playing.
At the top is an exotic garden - which mostly means it had a lot of different types of cactus in it, among other kinds of plants. The garden was lovely and the chateau at the top was, of course, in ruins, BUT the views were the real gem.
The bridge pictured in the top right picture was the one we had come over to get to Eze. It is called the Devil's Bridge because supposedly the guy who built it bargained his dog's soul to the devil to ensure the bridge was built successfully - or something like that. SHAME ON HIM! but the bridge is cool.
After climbing back down from the town and rehydrating ourselves at the little supermarket, we visited the Fragonard Perfume Museum in Eze. As we were the only English speaking people around, we got a private tour given by a very nice woman with excellant English. We learned all about 'noses' and how there are only about 150 of them in the world. You have to train for 10 years to become a nose. A nose only works 2-3 hours per day 'nosing', then he needs to rest his nose. It was fascinating and the factory smelled wonderful. As we 'exited through the gift shop', we got to smell several perfumes and I bought a small vial of one of them.
So now we are back at home, rested up and about to head out to find dinner. Yum.
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