It's nice in Nice
Me and the honey in Nice. Like my hat? Sure you do. Bought it in St Paul de Vence...just up the road.
A quick catch-you-up, since I've been stuck with a super-slow hotel network, which was restricted to one login per person per device, so transferring photos from phone to iPad for blogging was a challenge.
Spent a little time just keeping an eye on the Mediterranean for you. You're welcome.
Landed in Paris, connected to Nice, transferred to the Montaigne Hotel in Cannes. We remain a bit puzzled by the time spent in Cannes - there truly isn't much to do there, although we can hardly complain, right? Weather has been fantastic, and the Côte d'Azur is indeed very azur.
View of the very modern principality of Monaco. Yes, yachts are everywhere.
Day trip to Monaco, which is tiny, modern, and takes about an hour to tour. Maybe less. The cathedral, best known for Princess Grace's tomb, has one of the plainest interiors you will ever see. We did not have time to tour the palace, but did see the changing of the guard, which takes about five minutes. They were starting to set up for the Grande Prix, which was cool, and we did go to Monte Carlo and that was definitely worth a walk through, very very different from American casinos.
Today we went to St Paul de Vence, a walled town above Nice that was home to Chagall and a favorite of many artists. A classic medieval hill town with very narrow streets and stairways, lots of shops to explore, galleries, restaurants, and, of course, the cemetery featuring Chagall's grave.
People leave stones with inscriptions on the grave, a Jewish tradition
We boarded the ship today, and I'll fill you in on that tomorrow. We stay in port at Nice until tomorrow night, and I hope the Matisse museum will make it into my schedule tomorrow afternoon. Until then, I'll leave you with this picture of our program director Paolo. He says he knows the gesturing is an Italian stereotype, but he tried to keep his hands in his pockets once and no words would come out of his mouth. Ciao!
