Carnaval de Nice
A crowd scene of opening night at 2026 Nice Carnival
If you’ve been following along, you’ll already know that I travel a lot. I’ll assume that’s why you read this blog. Traipsing all over Europe with no agenda, visiting museums, monuments, the cafés, wineries, vineyards, and wandering through the back alleys was described as the pinnacle of freedom passed down to me by my father and step-mother when I was growing up in their house. When they met in their early 30s, they were both divorcées each with two kids, working in “good jobs” of the middle managerial kind that gave them few precious days to travel and experience the world. They suddenly found themselves in love and plunging back into married life, only this time with four kids to raise in 1970s America.
I remember they did go on a trip to the UK and France when I was a teenager. Maybe that was two separate trips? I don’t remember. But these travels only exacerbated their feelings of deprivation, I think, and in turn, amplified the rhetoric at home about not making poor decisions with my life choices lest I miss out on seeing an aqueduct or a painting. Of course, I immediately went to a middling college and failed out, but I found a girlfriend there, fell in love, and was married at 22. Then I began 40 years of working. I was obviously a good listener.
But they succeeded beyond their intent, the seeds they planted hibernated for decades before finally sprouting and out emerged an absolute obsession for travel, even if distorted. I moved over 50 times before this current journey I am on. I worked in creative fields—photography assistant, photographer, graphic designer, art director, creative director, design director—all giving me access to what I call a travel-adjacent life. Like my father before me, who was an IBM-man, and his father before him, who worked for Lockheed, we have all been especially adept at finding work that puts us on lots of airplanes, taking us to ponderous places like Ottawa, Canada, Memphis, Tennessee, and Benton, Arkansas. Yes, we traveled. A lot. Somehow the cubicles and the high-rise office views never matched up to the Roman ruins we imagined ourselves touching with our own hands.
Fortunately, for my father at least, he and my step-mother became avid travelers later in life after me and my siblings were gone and they had more time and money. I heard all about those trips, too. The famous artworks experienced firsthand, the ruins, the Segways, the ships and boats, the bridges, the food, the exotic people they met. Those stories were added to my childhood memories and they all ignited and sat burning like hot embers deep in my soul. You know the rest if you have been reading along. At age 59, I decided I couldn’t take it any longer and I had to go see these things for myself.
Now, two years later, I live in Nice, France, one of the world’s most beautiful cities. It’s the place I return to after one of my near-monthly trips to someplace else. The irony of ironies is that when I am here in Nice, I never go anywhere unless I can walk to it. I spend most of my time doing what I am doing now, sitting in front of my computer clicking away on these keys or editing through hundred of photographs preparing them either for this blog, or Instagram, or for one of my books. Or, I am nose-down in my wine studies preparing for an upcoming exam. I only go outside if I am running low on baguette, salted butter, or eggs and I have to feed myself.
I get asked often if I’ve been to some local village like Saint-Paul-de-Vence or Grasse, or to the Alpes to ski or just to see the snow, which is only 90 minutes from here, or to Imperial in Italy, again only an hour by train, or even to Cannes, which I think I can walk to, technically. Or if I have been to countless named fine restaurants here in the city. The answer is No. In other words, it has dawned on me that I really don’t know s*** about Nice. It takes visitors to force me out into the Niçoise cityscape, and when they do, I end up pretty impressed, I have to say.
Tête Carrée, also titled, “Thinking Inside the Box," the giant square head houses three floors of books within the central library
A quiet moment in a back alley in the Vieux Nice
Young love hiding out at the port of Nice
Côte d’Azur along the Mediterranean
This is the time of year when Nice puts on its world-famous Carnival festival. Brazil, New Orleans, Venice, and Nice, these are where you find the February street parties, parades, floats and colorful performers. I am certain I wouldn’t have seen a single minute of it if it weren’t for our friends Charles and Gayle visiting from Seattle, who bought tickets for us all, and then traveled all this way to experience it for themselves, as well as the sister event, the Citrus Festival, in close-by Menton. My enormous gratitude for their push is only matched by my pleasant surprise by the whole event. It’s huge. It lasts a two full weeks and takes over the entire promenade, the Place Masséna, the tram schedule, the restaurants, and the hotels. The tour buses are parked everywhere, the massive grandstands are built along the parade route, and there are so many tourists here that it feels like summer all over again. Charles asked me if I had been to the Roman ruins here yet. Roman ruins? Where? Just down the street apparently. He had already been. I really need to get out more when I am home.
Charles and Gayle
I can say I have been to Carnival now, though. It has been happening here since 1876, and I read somewhere that it goes back even further to possibly the 1200s. We went to opening night with the throngs of people and waited in long lines to get through security and the metal detectors. They do take all that very seriously here. We had terrific seats with an amazing view of the parade, the performers, the floats and all of the color, music, and pageantry.
Two days later we went to the flower parade and saw the “queens” and all of the performers. Each year, the Carnival has a theme. This year it was “Long Live the Queen,” a very pro-women display of different kinds of queens and a celebration of both modern and traditional female roles.
I have never seen so many French people smiling at once. Seriously. It was just weird. An entire culture that prides itself on its powers of complaint, and where high praise is met with the compliment, “pas mal,” (not bad.) They were singing and dancing and throwing handfuls of confetti. I am being snarky, but honestly, I didn’t think the French were capable of that kind of fun. During the daytime flower parade, the queens on the tops of the floats throw bunches of bright yellow mimosa flowers into the crowds, or even roses, and street side the crowd’s arms reach skyward to catch them as if they were going to be next one to get married. People collect armfuls of flowers and hug them tightly as they take the huge bunches home. Everyone is having a great time, singing, dancing, and otherwise enjoying the music, which is almost always classic American pop, and the colorful floats, costumes, and performers. The emcee worked the crowd and he was shown on the big screens placed among the bleachers. He pitted one section against another to see who could sing the loudest version of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. “Pas Mal! Pas Mal!” was offered to the winning side.
Pas mal!
This prince was kissed but still retained a lot of his frog
Carnival is a colorful spectacle in Nice
While Charles and Gayle were here we did indeed get out more. We ate at a few great new-to-us places, saw the flower market and the brocade market. Chien-hui went with them to Menton and to Antibes while I travelled to Tuscany to see our friends Mark, Marie, Patricia, and Eric, who were also visiting from Seattle (Bremerton). More on that trip in my next post.
Travel, by my definition, has always been something I do that requires me to leave home. Maybe it’s that way for you, as well. But, I am reminded that I don’t need to go far to have travel experiences, especially here in the south of France. That push and pull of me wanting to be home and focusing on my hobbies versus the feeling that I am wasting opportunities to see, hear, and do things that people pay a lot of money to come here for, is ever present.