Nice Day 3

 Yui and I coordinated again on our travel plans today. The adventure du jour is Cannes. Another small gorgeous town on the cote d’azure, they have a lot of these. Maybe I’ve been on the road too long but these small European towns are all starting to blend together. Get off the train station, walk up a hill to see the old town, narrow streets, questionable stairs. See the old church. See the old castle. Onward. They’re gorgeous, just all starting to seem the same.

Can be Cannes. Can be elsewhere.

Yui and I had a fantastic lunch and plot our next move. My mother’s cousin David recommended a town just up the hill called Grasse which is home to many old perfumeries. We take the train up and walk around. This place is steep. A 20 minute walk upstairs takes us to the international perfume museum. I’d never been to an exhibit with so many semellables before. It was great fun wandering around, learning about the trade, and sniffing samples. The craziest thing in the exhibition was definitely Marie Antoinette’s toiletry kit. Absolutely massive and made by Paris’ finest.

This tank shaped atomizer was cool too

Yui went to take a tour of a factory and I had to go back to Nice. I had plans with my friend Angelia who I’d met a few nights ago through other expats. The SNCF conspired to make sure that we still took the same train back. In Germany when your train is delayed or canceled you are stuck sitting in the train hall, glaring angrily at the arrivals board. In France, you go to a cafe and enjoy a nice tart. What a way to kill time. We took the train back to Nice together and said goodbye at the station.

Angelina lives in the city and took me around to some of the bars she’s discovered in her time here. At the end of the night we wound up at a jazz bar in the heart of the old city watching a coked-out vocalist sing his heart out for an endearing crowd. Magnifique.