Nice K-bab

We planned a full day: up and out early to get to the daily market in downtown Nice. We were famished, and saw rows of fresh flowers, vegetables, soaps, herbs, cured olives, sun dried tomatoes, cheeses, tasty bread. I sampled and bought some basil-cured olives (yum) and sun dried tomatoes, and we bought some foccacia for breakfast. Marah wasn’t terribly thrilled with this so early, so we had some tasty muesli with yogurt and hot drinks for breakfast, and headed on a hike up the hill to the Chagall museum.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been a great fan of Marc Chagall, but the museum was quite nice. (Yes, the day was filled with awful, obvious puns.) The garden outside has some olive trees that were fairly old, and an interesting variant of thyme – a very un-delicate plant, almost rough like typical rosemary bushes. Inside, there were a number of biblical murals – some however reminded me very much of the classic 1970s hagadot that my parents (still) use.

After the Chagall museum we hiked up to the top of the hill to some Roman ruins, a park, and the Matisse museum. Matisse spent the last ~50 years of his life here in Nice, and while most of the work here was from the latter part of his life, the museum does a good job demonstrating the progression of his style.

In the afternoon after our museums, we headed back down the hill towards our car. Marah was a bit tired halfway down, so we stopped at a park bench where she lay down to take a short nap, and I got to finish one of the New Yorkers that we brought. We found a bar in the old town to try some Socca, the local chickpea flour-based crepe. (I thought it was pretty tasty, especially with a dab of added pepper.) And to cap off the day, we went for a long stroll along the promenade by the ocean. Marah described it as very Miami Beach – expensive hotels, wide walkway, and beautiful colored ocean….though one of my favorite parts was watching the planes swing just a few hundred feed overhead as they turned to land in the Nice airport. After walking several miles by the beach, we stopped to sit and read as the sun went down. I started reading the food issue of the New Yorker, though Calvin Trillian’s exploits in Singaporean street hawker cuisine (or perhaps the wind picking up as the sun set) made us ready to head back towards the restaurants for dinner. We had a lovely meal at Royal Kebab (the “K-bab” of Nice, folks) with kebabs, tasty aubergine dip, etc…and then called it a day.