Nice-ties

Marc Chagall paintings are so fucking cool; you can stare at them for hours (okay, minutes) and keep finding different things to look at. He does really incredible things with color, and uses all these different levels of clarity and intensity so his paintings seem to be done in layers and come to you in waves. And he works all these funny little creatures into the background and they all look friendly, like you want to pet them. Chagall (he was Russian, you know, well Belorussian) painted a series of biblical scenes for the French government and theyàre in this museum in Nice and itsà really amazing. I was being that tourist trying to photograph the art because it was so, so good.

Nice also has a Matisse museum that didn't really do that much for me. There was some stuff that I liked (some dark still lifes, completely different from what he's famous for) but mostly a lot of studies and sculptures that I wasn't so excited about. And it was in this building that had a lot of things, like shutters and ceiling detail, painted on. I know it's a style, but it reminded me of one of those tuxedo t-shirts. I'm easy, but maybe not a total art whore.

Anyway, I like Nice so much better today than I did last night. The Chagall and Matisse museums are about a half hour walk from the city center, up in the hills, and you go through some really nice neighborhoods with cool architecture to get there. It looks a little like southern California, but with more character. The wealthy seem to live pretty well in Nice. And I had a really good roast beef sandwich for lunch.

I didn't feel like we were being crazy gung-ho tourists, but we did a lot today. In addition to the Chagall and Matisse museums we went to a modern art museum and the Nice Russian Orthodox church. None of the museums were that big, so we got through them pretty quickly. The Orthodox church was funded in part by Nicholas II's mother: Apparently a lot of Russians moved to the south of France in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Nicholas II's (the one the communists killed) mom was originally engaged to the tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich, but he died (in Nice, that's why the church is there; there's also a monument to him there) and she ended up married to Tsar Alexander III. Kind of a shitty deal, I think; I don't know much about Nicholas Alexandrovich, but Alexander III was ugly and an asshole.

Nice also has a really cool beach. It's rocks, not sand, but the water is all these beautiful different shades of blue and there are mountains and palm trees and big waves. The weather was perfect today, which made it even easier to fall back in love with Nice.

In addition to the museums, churches, and beach, we sort of made plans for tomorrow. We're going to Florence. My Spanish cell phone couldn't call France from France, but I can call Italy just fine. And in broken, broken Italian I was able to discern that all the affordable hotels in the Lonely Planet are booked. So we'll have to find a plan B when we get there. More adventurous that way.

Based on all of one city, France sees to have more comforts than Spain. Por ejemplo, the public bathrooms here have hot water in the faucets, and ware well stocked with toilet paper. Often they even have paper towels instead of hand dryers. But Spain is cheaper and the coffee's just as good. And French computer keyboards are nearly unusable. You have to push the shift key to type a period and they switch the A and the Z. It's their country, they can do what they want, but that's just silly.