Dreaming

I have wanted to go to the Côte d'Azur, and Nice in particular, for absolutely ages. Why Nice? The pun with nice, the fact that it's in France, the many many pictures of azure seas? Nothing in particular I can put my finger on, perhaps the many invocations from my mother that I would hate it (got to prove her wrong at least once!) or all of these things together. Honestly, Nice just feels like the place to make my dreams come true.

Nice is the fifth most populous city in France with a population of ~1 million. It was named after Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, around 350 BC and only became a permanent part of France in 1860.

I didn't love Nice at first though. I was disappointed by the beach and the weather and the promenade but mostly by my own reaction - the city just didn't awe me the way I had been expecting. How, and why, did I end up here?

So I climbed the Colline du Château - 214 steps to the panoramic view seen above. From here everything looked better - the light was brighter, making me forget that there was no sun. The rocky shoreline, the dilapidated beachfront buildings and the cracks in the promenade were obscured by the distance, instead a smooth veneer was held over the whole crescent of the Baie des Anges. The whole city was visible, rising into the hills from the beach, the promise of real people living real lives emanating from the city.

So Nice is a town that did grow on me. I fell in love with Vieux Nice (the old town) with its narrow streets, pubs, restaurants and souvenir shops, a morning market on the Cours Saleya, resplendent with fruit, veg and lavender, a chickpea pancake called socca at René - a salty, wholesome, almost sweet snack that's really a meal, crisp from a wood-burning oven, soft on the inside, eaten with my hands on long benches on the side of the street. Place Garibaldi, somewhat the opposite, a huge open square with restaurants and the Chapelle du Saint-Sépulcre, an amazing spot for watching the world go by, a picnic on forbidden grass in the Jardin Albert 1, amareno gelato, just one of like a million flavours at Fenocchio.

I found places I could really feel myself and become more of me than I dreamed of. I grew comfortable in Nice, I felt I belonged, almost that the city wanted me to stay, to love it, to fill it with my thoughts and emotions and my life.

Nice has been a beautiful dream come true. A dream that I cannot wait to have again and again and again.