What I Did on my Holidays: Part 231

I had a few days in Nice last week – my first foreign holiday for almost a year. 

Holidays for me are about a) food, b) art, c) lazing about, d) ice cream. Nice has the best ice cream west of the Italian border at Fennochio. I had lunch mostly at le Safari on the Cours Salaya, dinner once in Le Merenda and twice at my new favourite La Villa on the Rue de l'Abbaye. (If you're the tall blonde girl in the leather jacket who had dinner there with a friend Wednesday evening – I love you madly!) This time I finally got round to seeing the Musee Matisse, Musee Marc Chagall and Musee Massena. To my mind, the Musee Massena is worth visiting just for four paintings on the second floor: portraits by Carlo Garino, Raphael Pontremoli and Alexandra Cabonel, as well as the frescos of the Massena clan (and a harder-faced lot you'll have a long way to go to meet) by Francois Flameng. Having said that, the Musee des Bueax-Artes has a whole bunch of Raoul Dufy's, the only Fauvist I like.

It was way, way too hot for me and I'm way too fidgety for public sunbathing and don't feel comfortable in shorts-and-trainers, and that's what you need to be doing in those temperatures. I stayed at the Hotel Windsor, which has a shady garden over-run by mature trees and plants.

Some tips:

Take the 98 bus from the airport into town. It's 4€ vs 30€ by taxi and the ticket is valid for the rest of the day. But before you get to the bus stop...

… Euro coins. You cannot get these from French banks, whose (lack of) service make you realise that British banks are unmatched exemplars of customer service. There are machines at Nice airport (left hand side on your way to the bus station) that will give you Euro coins in return for notes. Use them!

All the art galleries you want (Musee Matisse, Musee Marc Chagall, MAMAC, Musee Massena and the Musee des Bueax Arts) are on bus route 22. Get an all-day bus pass for 4€ from the ligne d'azur office in the Place Massena and pick up a map from the display by the door.

Check out the roller-bladers practising on the Promenade des Anglais on your way back from dinner in the Old Town. The girls are pretty and the guys have mad skills.

White tee-shirts (yes, I did) make you look like an English tourist. If you must wear a tee-shirt, wear coloured ones. This rule does not apply in northern Europe, where the weaker light makes white tee-shirts look acceptable.