La Belle Nice

After our lazy Christmas my parents and I went to Nice for a week.  One would think that the dead of winter would not be the best time to visit Nice but we had a wonderful time.

The beach was practically empty but the Mediterranean was a ravishing blue that matched the sky.  And despite it being the dead of winter, the trees were laden with beautiful ripe oranges.

We couldn’t figure out why they were all on the trees rather than being eaten, but perhaps all that exposure to fresh oranges leaves the Nicois indifferent.  We, however, gaped unashamedly.

We spent a lot of time exploring Vieux Nice, including visiting the 17th-century Italianate Palais Lascaris and indulging in gorgeous gloves at gLOVEme.  Mine are acid green!

And of course, we sampled as many local specialties as possible – eating real Italian pizza with the locals (we were as close to Italy as any of us had ever been and we had the very best pizza we’ve ever had!), devouring moules frites and beautiful, sweet Mediterranean oysters, trying out real Provencal ratatouille, beignets and farcis at La Tapenade (the ratatouille was a true Ratatouille moment, and we enjoyed La Tapenade so much that we went twice), and, of course:

Socca, a real Nicois dish, from the self-anointed “Queen of Socca” herself, Theresa, at the Cours Saleya market.  Socca is basically a chickpea pancake, but words cannot describe how good socca actually is, especially on a cold midwinter’s day.  Pim says more about socca, here.

And we must not forget:

Gelato in January may seem counter-intuitive, but trust me, the Crema di Gelato version was so totally worth it.  The only reason we didn’t return on multiple occasions was that we were eating so much else!

We visited the morning market on the Cours Saleya, and, on Monday, the famous Nice antiques market.  There were wonderful things to see at both.  Look at the mouthwatering selection of olives at the food market:

And the equally mouthwatering selection of items at the antiques market (where we spent most of the day and found some beautiful things):

 

We hadn’t realized beforehand what a big deal New Year’s Eve is in France, so hadn’t thought in advance about what we should do or where we should go.  As a result, we had to resort to a street-by-street approach, scanning posted New Year’s Eve menus in restaurant windows.  They were on the whole horrendously expensive, but we eventually settled on the somewhat more reasonable La Villa in Vieux Nice.  It ended up being a very fun evening, with good food, a boisterous 14-person table to one side of us (who sang “Auld Lang Syne” in French to anyone who got up from any table in the vicinity, for any reason), party hats and pea shooters.  There was even a conga line at the end, that one of my parents (I won’t say which one) participated in….right through the kitchen and out the other side.

It being France, of course, on New Year’s Day we even got foie gras on our breakfast buffet!

We went to some fantastic museums as well – the Chagall Museum, the Musee des Beaux-Arts, the Archaeology Museum and my favourite, the Matisse Museum.  The Matisse Museum and the Archaeology Museum are next door to one another and the Roman ruins between them were fascinating.  

I liked making friends with the local residents at the ruins as well!