Nice Is Nice, and Next to Medievality and Monaco... (3)

I set off to make the most of my morning (before the afternoon tour to the Medieval village of Eze, and Monaco), and discovered Old Nice. I kind of cursed my choice to get the transport pass the previous day, actually, as I felt I could have happily spent a day wandering around this area. Lots of narrow streets, bordered by tall, uniform buildings, churches tucked away throughout (two of which I checked out), little shops with wares spilling out into the street...



This photo probably isn't the best choice to show it, actually. Another amazing aspect of Old Nice was the market that ran through one open area, with restaurants on either side, and just a hop, skip and a jump away from the sea.



I bought some strawberries as I couldn't resist, but it wasn't really the season, and they didn't compare to the ones I'm used to at home!
Also, some random man on a street corner greeted me with "Bonjour Mademoiselle... I love you... Ich liebe dich." Nothing like a bit of random flattery.

Found an Indian kebab for lunch, and was going to take it back to the hostel, but I actually just couldn't bear to go and sit inside when the weather was so amazing. So, I found a nice square and ate my lunch with a view of a fountain and a ferris wheel!

Not long after I got back to the hostel, my chariot (well, tourguide) arrived. Nothing beats door-to-door service. I'll say now that I fully recommend Med Tours (med-tour.com) because I had a great afternoon, and our tourguide was awesome, as were the other people on the tour.
We had me, two ladies from Argentina (tried out my Spanish just a little bit), an American lady and her two sons (one of whom claimed to be Albanian, which made me think of Albi the Racist Dragon), and a couple from Syria, who I made friends with (I hope they are ok now...).



First stop was Eze, a little Medieval village high on a hill between Nice and Monaco. Given we were only doing an afternoon tour, we had an insanely short amount of time to check it out (about 20 minutes) but we gave it a good go. Pretty amazing to see this compact little place, which still looked the part (except for sometimes when people opened the doors and you could see inside to where modern fixtures had been added). Apparently, there is a handful of people who actually live there, but there is also a hotel, and a couple of restaurants, I think. Spent our 20 minutes winding our way around various pathways and taking photos at the rate of knots in the hope of aiding our memories later on!




Just below, there was a perfume factory called Fragonard, which we got to tour. It was pretty interesting, actually, as this place is really exclusive and everything's manual. For example, we got to see the guy operating the machine that pressed the soaps into flower shapes. And they make a duck-shaped soap, and someone paints the beaks red by hand. I also learned that perfume keeps longer in an aluminium bottle than in glass, and that perfume, eau de parfum and eau de toilette/cologne all have different concentrations of perfume.
One of the young American lads said he was going to buy one product for all of his girlfriends, but later picked something else up and said that, if he had a girlfriend, he'd buy that for her. His mother pointed out that he was slipping, there.

Then, onwards to Monaco.



Interesting facts about Monaco: there is about 1 Police officer for every 40 people, plus there are security cameras everywhere. The entire country is 3.18 km (1.98 mi) long and 1.1 km wide (thanks Encyclopadia of the Nations!). Ie you can stand on one side of the country and see the border on the other side. Many of the rich, rich people who live there just come for several months each year, so they have concierges to look after their houses for the rest of the time. My Syrian friend and one of the American boys quickly decided that was the life for them, and claimed they were going to stay in Monaco and make it big that way, or opening car doors for people at the casino (literally cash in hand).

Ours was a whirlwind visit, but we managed to fit quite a few sights in: the Oceanographic Museum, the Princess' houses, the palace,



the great view over Monte Carlo (from Monaco), pole position on the Monte Carlo race track



the old bombs outside the Monte Carlo casino (the young man next to me was pretty much drooling over these). We did see one smart car arrive, though. Our cool guide joked that it probably meant they could give less of a tip to the door-openers!



We drove around the Monaco Grand Prix Track before leaving... of course, I had to document this for little bro.

And that was that: Eze and Monaco in four hours!

I decided to do an evening wander, as this would be my last night in Nice. And it looks pretty good in the evening.



Strolled the streets of Old Nice again, then headed down the Promenade des Anglais, before retiring to my hotel (but not before randomly running into my Syrian friends again!).