day3-ode to old town Nice

(Photo courtesy of Patrick; mine came out all blurry...)

We resumed our stroll in the recently gentrified old district of Nice after our fabulous meal at McDonald's, which led us to a switchback stairs among pastel-painted houses heaped on top of each other. Strips of slanted land alongside the stairs were partially overgrown. There were pinky tiny European cars parked on the streets. At the foot of the stairs was a metal dumpster with two smiling faces graffitied on it. (Patrick took a revealing picture of me crouching in front of the dumpster to take a close-up photo of the two happy faces.) There were laundered shirts and jeans still damp and heavy on ropes that sagged in the middle.

The signs of real people actually living in the quarter were abundant. People probably of working class, living their miniscule, unpretentious lives. People of no great means, but not numb in desperation nor in blood-shot ambition. It was pleasing to see that the historic old town has not been converted to neither a dead, curio-shop-studded tourist area where everything is geared toward tourists (no laundry outside! It looks bad.) nor an expensive fancy district where no ordinary local can afford to reside. A quaint town without real life going on in it has lost half the charm. Such a town is no better than the creepy illusion of the Disney World. To see an old woman almost smothered in a coat from her youth drop bags of grocery at her door and fumble for the key is an indispensable part of traveler’s delight. A window with its age-old paint peeling off and a pot of withering plant with a real family living behind it is far better than a row of windows with perpetually blooming plants with empty rooms behind the calculated drapes of lily-white lace curtains. Old town Nice is such a town with vivid reality of local life.

The rain, which had stopped for a while, started to drizzle again. We climbed up the stairs to the low-lying hill above the quaint apartment buildings. There was a panoramic viewpoint where you can feel who you really are—a tourist. The entire town of Nice, new and old, and the Mediterranean, spread under our gaze in a bluish hue of the rainy evening just before the lights flickered themselves on. Behind it was a small, terracotta-colored chapel with a dome, decorated with a mosaic of green and white tiles, and a cemetery, lined with cypress, quite reminiscent of its Spanish cousins where a family of a jet-haired Andalucian might be mourning for him, who fell in the endless acts of vengeance. Ahead of us was a mass of pine trees, illuminated by strong spotlights, as if the night had forgotten to caress the woods into the comfort of darkness.


panoramic view Nice
Originally uploaded by uBookworm.