Blake and Deborah in Europe: Nice

We spent one day and two nights in Nice, France, the first of which happened to be New Year's Eve. The main square was alive with a carnival atmosphere of music, lights, an ice rink, a holiday village of different vendors, and a ferris wheel. We listened to a live jazz fusion band at an outdoor concert, although we had to continually reposition ourselves in the audience when someone nearby lit up a cigarette. The French do like to smoke. It's a wonder they manage to have a higher life expectancy than us (#10 in the world, vs. #36 for the USA). Must be either their #1 ranked health care system or all the red wine, which acts as a preservative.

We discovered a new treat at the carnival called La Socca, a very thin cake-like delicacy based on an ancient local recipe made from chickpea flour and olive oil and cooked on a wood fire. Délicieux! Later we treated ourselves to a nice meal at a Vietnamese restaurant, which sounds like an odd choice for one's first meal in France until you remember that Vietnam is a former French colony. No snails for dinner this time. The two glasses of wine pretty much wiped Deborah out though. We didn't make it to midnight.

New Year's day our sightseeing choices were limited as the famous Russian cathedral here was closed, as was the Marc Chagall Museum, the Matisse Museum and all the other museums and stores. Instead we had a nice walk along the beachfront promenade and through the old section of Nice. Lunch was Greek (still no snails). Then we walked up Castle Hill (named after some ruins at the summit) to take advantage of its amazing views. Call us morbid but we really enjoyed the nearby cemetery as well. It had some of the most expressive sculptural monuments I've ever seen. It was such a pleasant place that you could understand why people are dying to get in there.