Nice or Can I Resist The Obvious Pun

For our last day with the Granddaughter we went to the city of Nice. Although Nice (pronounced niece) is a major tourist attraction on the French Riviera, for some reason it was never high on my list of places I'd want to visit. I will say after this visit, it ranks up there with some of the most attractive, approachable cities I've had the chance to visit.

We took the train in from Menton given our experiences trying to park in Monaco and drive in and around the airport. One can catch a tram (there is only one tram line in the city which makes it real easy) and it is only a few stops from the train station to the main tourist attractions in town. The weather was drop dead gorgeous with the temperature pushing 80 and the sky being clear.

Arriving at the Nice Train Station

Our first glimpse of Nice architecture

The Nice tram is super modern and has the most melodious station announcements

One of the 'must does' of Nice is going up the Castle Hill for the view. We saw that by going to the far end away from the old town there was a much less steep way of getting up...

...if it is not closed for new tram line construction

But THANK GOODNESS there is an elevator way on the other side...

...which was closed for a terrorist alert

Well none the less we could still go into the old town...

...guided by our enthusiastic (and I must say pretty good) navigator 2.1

 Finally! Into the Old Town

So much color. They talk about the color and the light in Provence and the

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Côte d’Azur

Nice on a beautiful, sunny day really exemplifies it.

Churches of course

I'm not quite sure why all the heroic figures in monumental sculpture are always so grim.

This one is supposedly the mythic washer woman who in the 16th century saved the city from a French and Turk invasion (Nice didn't belong to France then).

This is not

More scenes of the old city

10:30 AM?

Must be ice cream time

Wife says that French glace is not the same as Italian gelato

 On to the more modern parts of town!

 The color of the sea and the beach are renowned in Nice

There was this statue of Neptune in the middle of one of the main squares

What I want to know is why the artist felt the need to make one butt cheek be tilted so?

Finally, while the granddaughter went off boot shopping, Wife and I spent an hour in the classic French activity of lingering over a drink without a care in the world

Though I suspect Wife's mind was on where her next great picture was going to come from