Farnsniente

Sampling big scraps of the yummy socca chickpea flour bread.

We came, we saw, we ate

—

in
📍 Nice, France

Photos

Trip index

Summary

Drove to Nice. While Scott and Ron went to pick a device to give us wi-fi at the villa, Karen and Nancy had a nice walk along the beautiful Promenade du Paillon. It’s a recently developed green space over a former river bed/bus station/parking lot. We met back up at the Place Garibaldi for a foodie tour which took us through really charming parts of old Nice. It got off to a slow start but we had plenty to eat and drink by the end. Famous Niçoise specialities featured heavily – socca, pissaladière, pan bagnat and confit fruit to name a few. Back to the villa for dinner and more chillin’.

Details

You’d think a day like today, where we’re simply going on a foodie tour, would be easy to write up. But, as they comment about the French, why say something in five words when five hundred will do.

After our normal morning rituals back at the VRBO we drive the twenty minutes into Nice. Ron and I drop the girls at the Place Girabaldi and head over to the SFR mobile phone store to pick up the wifi access point that our VRBO owner has arranged for us. This is to give us the internet we’re supposed to have that we’ve been missing.

Package picked up, and verbal operating instructions memorized, we drive around to find some underground parking and squeeze our big car barely into the undersized spot. Meeting back up with the girls we get the report that a grocery store, complete with eggs and rotisserie chicken, has been located, along with a possible place for dinner.

We hang where we’ve been instructed and meet up with others also on our tour. We’re all from various parts of the US. A bright orange umbrella identifies Vanessa, our guide who’s most recently from western Canada. Thankfully she has zero accent. After ensuring we’re all there and finding out where each of us is from (and allergies and recent birthday’s confessed) we start the tour. We learn about the square and Garabaldi’s role in the creation of the unified country of Italy, the country of Uruguay, and his failure to get the city of Nice to be a part of Italy.

After a short walk we’re at our first stop, for socca, the wood oven cooked chickpea flour bread. As it was in Italy it’s very tasty and probably fairly healthy. We learn about how the locals were anything but French prior to the unification of Italy in the 1860s and after the sale of this region to France by Italy the locals we’re told “no more learning or speaking whatever it is you speak”. They weren’t happy but hey, what can you do. At least the street signs still (to this day) are in both languages. We’re told the spoken language sounds like a cross between Italian and Portuguese. Shudder.

Our next stop is for pissaladière (caramelized onions on bread with anchovies and olives) and deep fried breaded aubergine (eggplant) and zucchini. Not bad. The long wooden tables and benches are traditional and encourage communal dining. Beyond our group the only creatures we’re sharing the furniture with are the opportunistic pigeons.

Our next stop is at a water fountain where we hear more about the city, including the window tax that lead to all of the trompe l’oeil we see. If having more windows means you can’t afford that house you want to build, just build it without and paint fake ones on. Across from where we’re standing the restaurant sign is of a big horse head. Silently I’m chanting “oh, please no… oh, please no”. We don’t try any horse meat, so I guess my prayers were answered.

Our next foods are, instead, olive oil tastings, thick vinegar cream tastings, and mustard tastings. Too many but very good. We can imaging all of the wonderful things we could make with these things, if we’d be willing to part with all the monies it’d require to buy this overpriced stuff.

Next door the prices only go up. We’re in a chocolate/confectioners store and they make everything very precisely and charge accordingly. The candied orange peel is very appealing and the chocolate covered almond (one) is crunchy and delicious.

We walk through a big outdoor market with food and plants on our way to our next stop, a wine store. We pass a pizza vending machine along the way. At the wine store we hear (again) how we’re divided into the ‘haves and have nots’. That is, those of us who paid extra for more alcohol and those (the majority) who didn’t. The first ‘extra’ is a taste of a second bottle of wine (pink) to go with the white that everyone gets to try. I peek at the price… 4.50 euros for the bottle. :-/ Were tasting these with our nicoise sandwich (tuna, egg, olives) and regional chard tart dessert (with raisins, piñon nuts, and powdered sugar), really quite delicious.

Further along we install ourselves for our next course, a sit-down lunch. We’re in the center of town, with buildings towering all around us, although directly overhead we can still see the blue sky. To one side of us is the front of an enormous church. Signs admonish us to be considerate to our neighbors (ecclesiastical and otherwise) as we nosh and imbibe. We don’t get the dishes that had been planned for us (they were out :-/ ) but the pesto pasta and ravioli were good, especially with the carafes of red wine served therewith (and glasses of pastis anis liquor for us ‘haves’).

Inside the church next door we see what they mean by ‘plain on the outside and fancy on the inside’. How in the world can they afford to maintain all this glittery opulence? We learn. If you know through what door to go, and when, you get to a secret bar and the proceeds therefrom go to help maintain the church. Presumably the churches good works include trying to encourage people to drink less. Hm.

Our last foodie tour stop is for gelato and it is (in keeping with the church theme) divine. We either get a scoop or two half scoops (i.e. two flavors). With the frozen confection we’re filled to capacity, thank our guide and say our goodbyes (and happy birthdays) to our fellow tourees.

We walk along the Promenade des Anglais (Walk of the English) paid for long ago by the English so they could walk as a part of their rehabilitation from the coal-filled air of back in London. We marvel at the stone beach and even walk on some of it.

At the fountain with Apollo we check out his 23′ height, and all of his ‘features’. Did they really warrant the temporary taking down of the statue for many years to appease the squeamish, prudish catholic women? Not by our measurement.

Our walk back to the grocery store and car is through a very wide, very long, very nice park. The place is full of running and yelling children, off for easter school break. The park is fairly recent, after they covered the Paillon river that flowed through town forever. We buy groceries, and head back home for dinner and wine. We all agree it was a great day, although the price of the foodie tour didn’t quite equal out to what we were able to sample.

Photos

[Note: to view the photos in chronological order, start at the bottom :-/ ]

At the other end of the Promenade des Anglais we get to the 23′ tall statue of Apollo. Reportedly when first erected he was, shall we say, anatomically proportional. The local catholic women protested and soon the statue was gone, put into storage. Later a city father insisted he be re-erected. There’s dispute as to whether the offending ‘portion’ of the statue was adjusted to ease the complaints of the local prudes. Around Apollo are the nine planets and on his head are the four horses that pull his chariot across the sky, dragging the sun. The girls were set on investigating for themselves.
As the waves come in and go out you hear the gentle clinking of the rocks against each other as they’re slowly dragged out to sea. An annual activity is the delivery of the rocks back to the beach and the smoothing out of the flat ‘beach’ once again. Here you can see the big(ish) pile of imported beach rocks ready for the work.
The famous beach of Nice. The surface isn’t so ‘nice’ being (mostly) not sand, but rather rocks. Nice became famous back during the Industrial Revolution, when London and other cities were choked with the smoke from burning coal. The remedy? Head down to the sunshine and clean air of Nice to recover. Thus the city comes by its ‘mostly tourist economy’ honestly.
The Église Saint-Jacques-le-Majeur (the church of Saint Jack the Greater) next door is very impressive. Even more so for its hidden/secret bar. Only open at certain times, you have to know through which door to proceed and the proceeds of the alcohol sales go to help maintain the church (whose mission, it would seem, would be to encourage people to drink less… hm).
Vanessa had planned for us to have a particular set of dishes to try here. Alas they were out, so we get pesto pasta and cheese/meat ravioli. Again we’re divided into the haves and have nots, with us alcoholics partaking of pastis (anis liquor) in addition to the carafes of red wine.
In the foreground is the sit-down restaurant where we’re tucking in for our next course. In the back ground is a huge cathedral (church)? The denomination was known for having ornate insides and plain outsides. The signs at the restaurant encouraged the patrons to be mindful (i.e. not overly loud) due to their ecclesiastical neighbor.
Our next stop was at a wine store. Our group was divided (repeatedly) into the haves and the have nots. That is, those of us lushes who’d paid extra for more alcohol and those who hadn’t. In this case our ‘extra’ was a taste of a second bottle of wine. I cheated and peeked. The bottle? 4.50 euros. :-/ To eat here we unwrap the sandwiches nicoise (tuna, egg, olive, etc) and we have chard tart, desserts made with chard, sugar, raisins, piñon nuts, and topped with powdered sugar. Yum!
Optionally you could just get your food from a vending machine, such as from this pizza dispenser, no human interaction required.
Not all of the produce was fresh. These two mountains of vegetables were pre-grilled. Aubergine (eggplant) and red pepper. In the foreground is chickpea flour for DIY socca. BYO wood-fired oven.
Produce was also on offer and true to French tradition, it looked perfect and perfectly yummy.
Along a wide street parelleling the famous Promenade des Anglais (English walking boulevard) is a morning market. Many of the stalls were selling extremely healthy plants, including many citrus trees, complete with big oranges, lemons, or limes.
Across the street we get another lesson in trompe l’oeil. Here we see some of it done and some still in process. We are told this tradition came from long ago when there was a window tax. How much tax you paid for your house was based, in part, on how many windows you had. Solution? Have fewer windows (but make your place seem more ‘normal’ by painting on some extra windows).
The pictures skip a stop: tastes of many (too many) flavored olive oils, cream vinegar, and mustard. Some are truly delicious and the creaminess of the vinegar with help it to cling to the lettuce leaves better. The exorbitant price tag keeps us purchase-free. Here we’re trying candied orange slices. If we thought the vinegars were expensive, ooh wee baby, these confections were priced out of this world. But they were good.
The post-meal volunteer clean up crew. The long tables, both inside and out, are traditional and encourage communal dining.
Our next stop is for Pissaladière, caramelized onions on thin bread with anchovies and olives. This place missed a few of those specifications, but it’s OK. Next to that is the breaded and fried sliced aubergine (eggplant) and zucchini. All OK but maybe a tad bland. Again no beverage. Is it too early to be drinking (hint, we are on vacation).
We each get a tear or two of the bread. It is damn tasty. No beverage to go with it, alas.
Our first stop is for socca, chickpea flour bread, cooked in this wood fired oven. Here you can see it reflecting the flames of the fire, in the big metal pan.
Vanessa explains to us the interesting history of this part of France. It used to be a part of Italy before Italy was a unified country (as recently as the 1860s). As such, there are two languages here and every street sign reminds us of that. We’re told that the spoken language sounds like a cross between Portuguese and Italian. Shudder.
Spotted by the trademark orange umbrella of the tour company we hook up with our guide, Vanessa. She’s from various places, but mostly eastern Canada, which means her access was imperceptible, yay. She ensures we’re all here and finds out where we are from (all corners of the US).
Parked and settled in where we are to meet our Foodie Tour guide we look around at Place Garibaldi. All four sides pretty much look identical, with this yellow color with the ubiquitous trompe l’oiel fake window trim. In one corner is this outlier color without the trompe l’oeil, giving a good contrast to see what the buildings would look like if they were just their plain, flat selves. The quiet electric trams rolling by now and again remind us of all the good public transportation they have over here.
On the drive into Nice we passed the multi-story public library. Understandably there are differences in opinions about the design of this “building”. It’s been under rehabilitation recently so you can’t go inside. I guess they need to get their head on straight.