When my friends, Faye and Barry, were in this area in June, they did a walking tour called A Taste of Nice. They really enjoyed it and, as well, it is highly recommended on Trip Advisor. As Sue, Keith and I are all interested in food and wine, it sounded like the perfect tour for us in a city which none of us know. Further, it would be a completely different perspective on things than taking a Hop On-Hop Off bus. So, Thursday morning, we met up with our tour guide, Gustav, and began an exploration of this city on foot. We were lucky. Our group was small: the three of us plus Chloe, a twenty-something gal from Belgium who currently lives in Germany. First, I have to be honest, I've never been a fan of Nice. I'm not sure why but maybe it is because whenever I've driven through it the traffic has been a horror; maybe it is because when you pass through it by train a few times all you see are badly maintained beautiful old buildings covered in graffiti; or, perhaps and even more likely, it is because I am generally not a fan of big cities. Therefore, I'd pretty much already made my mind up that I could not be won over. Then, the tour began and I discovered I was quite wrong! We met Gustav at Opera Plage and getting there meant taking a bus from Villefranche to Le Port and then walking around to the Nice seafront by the harbour filled with huge yachts - when is a yacht so large that it becomes a ship? Our tour started with a brief history of Nice including its roots as part of the Kingdom of Savoy and its strong link to Italy's culture and food. We learned this while eating orange water flavoured fougasse. At Patisserie Henri Auer, established in 1820 by a Swiss confectioner, we tasted candied fruit and chocolate. The store is actually more a confiserie-chocolaterie than a pastry shop and the interior is ornate in the Belle Époque style. It used to be a tea room and, during her reign, Queen Victoria was a frequent visitor.
Next, there was a stop at a pasta shop where they sold green gnocchi called Merda di Can and you don't need to have a lot of French and Italian to understand it resembles, yes, dog poop! We didn't sample any.
Other stops on the tour were a wine shop where you can bring your own container and have it filled up with your choice of wine; wandering through a market where, at one stall, all the ingredients for ratatouille were displayed together and, at another, there was a fabulous offering of mushrooms including truffles; and a restaurant featuring socca, a chick pea-based sort of pancake where we also tasted meat-stuffed veggies served with wine.
Then, it was on to visiting Nice's oldest (and award winning) bakery; tasting olives and olive oils served with an organic Provençal rose wine in a little gallery; and, finishing the tour at a gellaterie. It was a very interesting and delicious tour.
What made especially good was that most of it was in the narrow alleys of the old town which proved to be way more charming than I thought they would be. Okay, I'm now a fan and hope to get back for another visit before I leave this area.
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