With the weather turning colder, wetter and windier - the clocks falling back, we can easily be tempted to warmer climes. The Daily Telegraph reports on Nice, France. Here is an extract....
Low-cost airlines flock into Nice, and hotels and restaurants need be no more expensive than they are in Calais. It is, in short, time to reinstitute the winter season in Nice. There's no more satisfying spot in France. Here's how to do it.
Day 1
Wake up, brush your teeth and, simultaneously, open the shutters. The light will be as fresh and sparkling as your toothpaste. Make first for Place Masséna, the rhythmic central space where the big city – France's fifth – breathes out amid gardens, fountains and arcaded buildings brilliant in Pompeian red. Some morning people rush through, a metropolitan click to their heels. Others linger. Japanese couples, who know a thing or two about urban harmony, photograph one another. Linger with them.
Then cross into the Old Town, which was all there was of Nice before foreign aristocrats started showing up in the early 19th century. It's a warren of wriggling streets no thicker than a fisherman's forearm. The Niçois were packed in pretty snug. They still are, now jostling to sell us Provencal frocks, dodgy art, olive oil – and simmered lambs' trotters on restaurant terraces crammed in so tight, you're effectively sitting in the coffee shop opposite.
"Touristy," cry the purists. Purists know nothing. Nice has always done commotion and boisterous commerce. They're as traditional as the buildings' ochre tones, the old dears chatting on chairs or the baroque churches beseeching in such florid fashion that the Almighty must surely shade His eyes. (Pop into the Eglise du Gésu, jammed in at 12 rue Droite.)
If shops and bars weren't there, you'd be left with purists and guidebooks, and where's the life in that? So buy an ice cream at Fenocchio's on Place Rossetti, wander on and burst out into the Cours Saleya. On flower market mornings, the Cours is a barely- controlled explosion of colours and aromas. "All the sensuousness of Provence," says a French woman I know. "Except the sex." I'm not sure she's right. I'm not sure there's not something promising about the succession of stalls with their effusion of pert blooms, their rounded fruit, their suggestion of juicy fertility. But doubtless I've been travelling alone too long.
Whatever the level, it's a seductive spectacle, concentrated by Italianate buildings all around, and defiant of winter. By now, well-dressed restaurant tables will be edging out for al fresco lunchtime, professional chaps in aprons will be opening the necessary oysters, and you will be overcome with food lust, at least.
Best move briskly out through the arches to the most dazzling city sea- front in Europe. And I mean "dazzling". When I was there a few days ago, I couldn't look at the stretch of sea upon which the sun was shining. Someone had turned the sky up to "max". I'm not going to go on about the Promenade des Anglais. You've seen the photos, and the movies in which gaily laughing beauties are driven along in open- topped cars by Cary Grant or similar. You know the score. I'll be brief.
La Prom curves almost five miles around the Bay of Angels. It's punctuated by palms and pergolas. And it's been the favoured stroll of fashionable folk since the British community funded the initial length in the 1820s. Leisure-wear has dumbed down since the days of frock-coats and bustles. There are now also more joggers – and very, very small dogs – than I deem desirable. But the aura remains, underwritten grandly by the sheen of the elements.
This draws the sting of the ugliness of many buildings. Here and there, lovely 19th-century edifices survive. Elsewhere, they have been substituted by utilitarian 20th-century blocks doodled not so much by architects as by their guide dogs. Ugliest of the lot is the Méridien Hotel, which is why you should enter for lunch. For a start, once inside, you can't see the outside. But rise nine floors to the rooftop Terrasse restaurant and what you see are the most arresting seaside views in Nice. Food's good, too, from about £40 for a full meal.
Stroll on. Skirt the Promenade hustlers, stop at the Palais Masséna, for an idea of how Nice life was lived when the aristos dominated. Both gardens and palace have escaped redevelopment, the palace to become a museum. This tells the Nice story from Napoleon through the mid-20th century. But it also tells its own story, a grandiose tale of wintering nobles trying to out-pomp one another. Marble halls and reception rooms swamp you with sumptuousness. There's not a shred of self-doubt. And, like most Nice museums, it's free.
Day 2
To the Promenade des Anglais, opposite the Albert I gardens, and onto the open-topped Grand Tour tourist bus. You may think this is naff. It isn't. For £17, it's the most effective way of looping around some of Nice's greatest hits without undue effort. It's a hop-on, hop-off service, so you can spin it out all day. The English-language commentary is excellent. When the chap shuts up, Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto takes over – a stirring soundtrack for a trip around the headland to the port, onto Mont Boron for more posh villas and inland to Cimiez hill. Hop off at the top. Cross the magnificent olive grove to the monastery church. Louis Bréa's three great 15th-century religious paintings show he'd got the hang of the Renaissance. Cross back to the Matisse Museum. You can't miss it – it's the red-ochre Genoese villa – and you shouldn't. Almost all the artist's career is covered in riveting fashion.
Have a glance at the nearby classical remains. The Romans established their settlement here on the hill, but a glance suffices to appreciate what's left. Then make for the road and the thumpingly huge Regina, built as a hotel specifically to cater to Queen Victoria. She'd take over the entire west wing – look out for the crown on top – to receive other royals visiting Nice, musicians and French dignitaries.
Victoria was enormously popular, partly because she gave presents to everyone but mainly because she was in Nice in the first place. As far as locals understood, the British queen ruled a quarter of the world. To have bagged her for their town was wonderful PR. After she died, they erected a fine statue in front of the Regina gardens. It shows the queen in her middle years – regal, serene and not a bit frumpy.
Victoria's presence on Cimiez hill made it the Belle Époque des-res district, as you'll appreciate as you saunter down the Boulevard Cimiez spotting villas all-but-edible in their frothy ornamentation.
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