Old Town

I had an interesting conversation with the proprietor of a cave, a wine shop, just around the corner from our hotel.  It was well-stocked with Côtes de Provence rosé, and it was not very expensive at all.  I choose a bottle for only €6.00, and a second bottle for €11.00, and they were both excellent.

“Where are you from?” he asked me in English, and I replied, “Les Etats Unis (the United States).”  He had a twinkle in his eye.  “And where is that?” he asked me innocently.  I thought a moment, and said, “It is a very, very long way from here!”  He laughed and we carried on a little conversation.  He had lived all over France but now enjoyed being in Nice.  “You have a very beautiful country,” I told him.  “And it seems so safe here.  In our country we have . . .”  (I struggled with the word for guns and gestured as if I was holding one.)  “Ah, les armes!  No, but we have our problems too.”  I laughed.  “You mean, your mustard shortage (I had been reading about that)?”  He looked puzzled.  “Dijon,” I said.  “Ah, you know about that!  Yes, in our country we like to eat and drink.  And we like la paix.”  Yes, la paix.  Peace.  I realized talking to this man that I was a little ashamed of our country, where there is a mass shooting nearly every weekend these days.  Although there have indeed been terrorist attacks over the years in France, here it is the police who have the assault rifles.

On every street in our neighborhood we also saw places called immobiliers, which I had  to look up.  Mobile phone stores?  No, they were real estate offices (“Estate Agents” in the UK).  Almost as many as there are in Highlands.

We were ready by then to begin the long journey home, and Martha had arranged with our travel agent for a flight from Nice to Paris tomorrow morning on Air France.  So on our last day in the city, we wanted to explore an area calls Vieux Nice (Old Town), a part of Nice Martha had not yet explored on her own in those days before I could join her.  We learned that it was just east of the Plage de Carras where we had been yesterday, and several days ago we had both been on its outskirts.  We walked along the beach and then through a gate into the area, immediately entering the daily market we had read about on a pedestrian street called Cours Saleya, with stalls selling soaps, flowers, herbs and teas, fresh fruit and vegetables, and open bins of olives.

 

 

 
North of the market area, there was a maze of very narrow cobblestone streets and historic, pastel-colored buildings.

We could hear church bells ringing from the tower of the 17^th-century Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate de Nice.  We stopped just down the street from the cathedral – an alley, really, a ruelle – at a tiny outdoor café called Hobo Coffee, which in addition to coffee sold bière, vin, and sandwiches.  Our server was a young, friendly blond woman who asked us what we would like.  “You speak very good English,” I told her.  “That’s because it is my native language,” she replied, and it turned out she was from Galway, Ireland (I thought I had detected a faint brogue).  It was a busy time of day, and I wish we could have had more time to talk to her and learn what long and winding road had taken her from her rainy Irish home to warm and sunny Nice.