Nice is Awfully Nice…for the Summer

Monday morning, SNCF picked up my big fat suitcase filled with clothing and things for my six solid weeks in the south, thanks to their service “Mes Baggages à Domicile.” They pick up your luggage where you want (at your home, at your place of work, at the hotel, at a friend’s house, etc.) and they deliver them to the address of your choice in 24 or 48 hours. Once the big bag goes, I can pack a small carry-on and be relieved of all the stress of schlepping the monster bag with me.

It costs a mere 38€ per bag — you just have to have already booked your train travel. For half the price, you can deposit your luggage at the departure station before 11 a.m. and you can collect it the same day at your arrival station from 5 p.m. Every year I let them pick it up and deliver it and every year I bring more than I need, but it doesn’t matter — it makes it all so easy. By the time you read this, my bag will have been delivered and I will have unpacked it all.

When I arrived in Nice yesterday, my old friend, Christa Kollig, was waiting for me to spend a few days together. A resident of Bonn, Germany, we met in Mikonos in 1979 when she and her first husband were staying in the same hotel and we were enjoying the same nude beach, “Super Paradise.” Ever since, she and I have annually taken a beach vacation together. This year, our beach of choice will be Ibiza mid August, but as a retired Lufthansa employee who thinks nothing of boarding a plane, she flies all over the world at the drop of a hat…hence a few days in Nice in advance of our “real” vacation.

Last night the Nice Jazz Festival opened and we will definitely partake of some of the events. This afternoon we are destined for some beach time. I am ready with good water shoes and lightweight folding lounge chairs — necessary accessories to happily be on the “galets” (Nice beach pebbles). People who complain that the Nice beach isn’t sand just haven’t experienced it with the right tools. Good shoes and chairs make all the difference, keeping you free of sand and clean except for the suntan lotion you spread all over your skin. I’ve come to appreciate it, and love gazing out at the aqua blue water that turns a dark blue in a perfect line about a half-mile in the distance, denoting a dramatic drop in the level of the sea floor. It’s very swimmable as it’s salty and buoyant, not to mention warm plus normally fairly calm.

Did you ever see Jean Dujardin’s “Brice de Nice” movie? “The main character, a thirty-something surfer named Brice, lives for one thing: the perfect wave to surf, despite the fact that Nice lies on a completely waveless bay on the Mediterranean Sea.” (Wikipedia.org) (It’s hilariously stupid and funny, btw!) That’s Nice and one reason it’s so “nice.”

Sometimes the undertow is strong, but otherwise, it’s pretty perfect for a swim or just a float. I take a “noodle” with a sling chair attached that is the perfect answer to an effortless float. Christa calls them “our diapers,” to which there is always a chuckle, thinking of us “old ladies” floating around in them. Who cares? Nobody. We’re having fun.

A la prochaine…

Adrian Leeds
Editor of Parler Nice

(in Nice with Christa)

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P.S. I’m happy to announce a new House Hunters International episode will soon air! See the announcement below for more details.