Salut de France (deux)

Day 4

After breakfast at the usual place, we check out of the hotel with a bit of a heavy heart and head for Nice. I am a bit grumpy as the next hotel is not very nice. Dinner at a restaurant where they are showing a football game. The waiter is playing the "I cannot understand you game". Gemma says it is my fault but his wife takes over and things move much more smoothly.

Day 5

Walked along Rue de France as far as the Taoist bookshop where, as last time, I had a short conversation with the owner. He has no books in English, and I suspect thinks I am a bit of an idiot.

Lunch at a cafe near the Galleries Lafayette. Got chatting to an English couple. He was quite intense, fit looking, wearing nice clothes, 59 (aparently), his wife looked attractive and expensive. He was excited about the new Lexus hybrid he will be getting at the end of the month. He told me that he and his wife had been in Nice only a few months ago with another couple. They were in their hire car, stopped at some lights when someone opened one of the back doors and tried to relieve his wife of her handbag. Our new friend looked like he would have been quite tasty in his day. He told me that the most interesting thing about the experience was his response to it. He said that he was "the kind of guy that you could throw a glass of wine over in a club and he would walk away". (Somewhere in my head I enjoyed experimenting with this idea, deciding it was not very safe). However he had seen red and rugby tackled the young tike as he sprinted off. In so doing he badly damaged his knee and the would be thief wriggled free to jump on the back of a waiting get away scooter. This was a big deal for him and his account of it felt very personal, like a warning. He had turned his chair towards me and I noticed that several times he touched my arm, unusual I thought.

Saw those two gay Scottish TV interior designers coming out of Emporio Armani, they saw me pointing them out to Gemma.

Day 6

Moved to the Hotel Windsor. Much better. Continuing the celeb theme, Michael Caines, (the two Michelin Star chef with a plastic hand) was sitting in reception.


Walked all the way up to the Matisse Museum in Cimiez, the posh bit of Nice up the hill. From his early work there was a still life of a small pile of books on a table. It didn't appear to be painted particularly delicately, nontheless I could imagine the feeling of the pages of one of the books with a slightly turned up corner against, my thumb. Is that why they call it still life? Art like that brings things to life, it has a kind of heat. I noticed that the French for still life seems to be Nature Morte however.

Nature very much not morte in the garden of the Hotel Windsor