Our last day on the Riviera and we’re already missing it. Our stay the the Grand Hyatt Hotel Martinez has been outrageous and we’ve found so many great things to eat, see, and do during our stay.
Today was our day to see Nice and Eze. So like yesterday we hopped on the train and were in Nice in about 30 minutes. After a short walk we found ourselves in the Vieille Ville – the old city.
Of course today was Christmas Day so most everything was closed but we found a surprising number of places open. We stopped and had a quick refresher at a cafe in the Vieille Ville on Place Rosetti. I had cafe au lait but Jeff chose hot chocolate.
That is no Swiss Miss, it’s a cup of heated chocolate. I had a taste and it was divine. We then continued exploring the old city, which is a maze of 15th century streets that used to house the families of the men that fought the Barbary pirates.
Nice was founded in about 350BC and has a strong Italian influence owing to its proximity to Italy and its polotical association dating to the 7th century. The history of Nice is fascinating and if you’re interested take a few miments and read about it.
We continued wandering and fortunately found a great boulangerie open for a little snack.
And right across the narrow passageway was a church called Église Saint-Jacques-le-Majeur de Nice. What a nice surprise!
It didn’t look like much from the outside but the inside was gorgeous.
Shortly after this we took a little side trip to Èze which is in the next post. When we returned to Nice we walked around where their Christmas celebrations were set up in central Nice. These included a gigantic snow globe!
The square was really nice – oddly reminiscent of Germany.
Afterward we made our way back to the train and returned to our haven in Cannes. Tomorrow we leave for Lyon!