It's so much nicer, in Nice!

Yup, Monte Carlo's cool n'all, love the walk around the bay, took a picture of the Grand Prix track as we walked along it, see, but we walked to the train station (it's a nice train station!) and took the train to Nice at about 11am. This public phone, at Nice Station, is the venue of the first ever telephone conversation between Eric and myself. Eric called me in London from here when I was on vacation, here he is re-enacting his decision to call. Ah!

We found a photography exhibition, which inspired me to take pictures of buildings like this. OK, I'm still a novice, theirs was better, but I still like them.

This is the seafront, and here's the Marche des Fleurs (yep, that's right, a flower market, we're learning!) Eric bought me some roses, and I bought a bunch of lavender, all great additions to the shrine, which I'll post a picture of at the end of this blog because I really think it's never looked better.

There was a great Italian food marquee along the promenade. We were hungry, so we made good use of the free samples of cheese, salami, pesto, wine and beer, and bought a new pesto to try. I've decided in the world of pesto, red is the new green.

We found this great perfumery selling perfumes from Grasse. If you've read 'Perfume' by Patrick Suskind, you'll know that all the best perfumes come from Grasse. We bought two perfumes, one called Bouquet des Alpes and one called Soleil de Nice, a snip at only 2.50 euros each. One is for women, one is unisex, but I can't for the life of me remember which. I do know that later on in the bus, slightly tipsy after our lunch in this gorgeous square, Eric tried on one of them, spilled the bottle over himself and smelled extremely potent for the rest of the afternoon and night. I took another still-life after our lunch.

We also found this Indian Restaurant. I mean, seriously, what were they thinking!

Our bus journey took us to Eze Village, the famous Medieval village on a hilltop. This is it, and our view, from the bus. Here's the mountain walk that inspired Nietszche. Eze is beautiful, the tiny cobbled streets lead to chi-chi shops and super-expensive hotels. I crept through the door of this hotel (lunch for 130 euros) for the courtyard pic. In this store, I bought raspberry vinegar and pumpkin seed oil, and the owner spoke to us in a mix of French, English and German (clever bloke!)

The garden at the very top of Eze is gorgeous and worth the extra money you pay to get in, with several of these feminine sculptures dotted around, each named and with a poem in both French and English. This is an excellent touch, more on-the-spot language coaching! I'll take all I can get (the word 'groung' can be overlooked in these cicumstances!)

I'm copying the statue here, but as I've said before, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

There's a church below it, too, and Eric and I lit a candle inside, him for the second time. It was very peaceful, but the nun overseeing the church wasn't too keen on us I think, you see you had to pay 40 cents to use the toilets, it's like a machine where the light comes on and the door opens, and being sneaky I went, but then held the door open for Eric to go, he peed in the dark of course but we saved 40 cents!

This gorgeous picture was taking at the l'espace de contemplation in the garden. I contemplated giving Eric a big smacker, and then decided I would. Cool eh!

Today's view from a window is actually a view through an arch. It's my favourite so far, I think.

On the way back down, we found another Perfume shop, this one called Fragonard. Everything in there smelled so good, I ended up buying a little box with 10 tiny little 2 ml bottles of every fragrance they carry, for 19 euros. Between here and Egypt, I have pretty-much enough perfume to wear a different scent every day for a month!

Oh, as promised, here's the shrine. Note the flowers from Naples and Nice, and the lavender.