Best of Nice

Life seems to be pretty much back to (more or less) normal in Nice.  Masks are still required on all public transportation (trams, trains, buses…), when inside any shop or any interior public space, and even outdoors if in a crowd (open air markets, standing in line), but otherwise most people are maskless outdoors.   Vaccine passports (Le Pass Sanitaire) are required for all restaurants, cafés (even outdoor cafés!), museums, cinemas, some malls, and most events.  After some initial grumbling, the restaurants are humming again and cafés are full, and nightclubs are hopping.

Nice is now over 80% fully vaccinated, which will probably pop right up to 98% in the coming weeks because by mid-October Covid tests will no longer free for the French, so those resisting the free vaccine and instead getting their Pass Sanitaire by doing the nasal swirl every 3 days will soon have to pony up 29€ a pop.  The massive anti-vax protests that made national news a few months ago are now down to an angry trickle, and it seems that the threat of not getting to have a coffee in a sidewalk café pretty much won over the opposition.

Tourists that don’t have the European QR code vaccine pass can just show the paper certificate from your home country, but be sure to take a photo of it in case you lose it or get pickpocketed!   If this happens, in worst case, just go get the Antigen test and you are good to go for at least a few days until you can get a copy of your actual certificate.

Americans travelling to France, even vaccinated, still have to show a negative test before flying home, but tests are available all over town with no appointment necessary (just look for the little white testing tents), and an Antigen test (usually all that is required) is just 29€ with results in 15 minutes, or a PCR is 49€ with results in 24 hours.

Photo credit: Best of Nice Blog

…Not in Nice, you won’t!

I was travelling most of August, so imagine my surprise upon returning home to find Nice splashed all over the news yet again… but this time for the completely ridiculous and reactionary burkini ban!  …And the viral video of armed Nice police passing their time making women disrobe on the beach for ‘good morals’?! Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

The burkini ban sprouted from an extremely misguided knee-jerk reaction against radical Islamic terrorism… which the attack in Nice wasn’t, by the way! News stories keep co-mingling the Paris and Nice attacks as if they were the same thing, but they were absolutely not.

It is normal that people want someone or something to blame for an act so incomprehensible, but to turn their fury on women’s swimwear, seems very strange indeed.

Photo credit Nuns Having Fun Calendar by Maureen Kelly and Jeffry Stone

Update: The Nice Burkini ban was suspended by the courts last Thursday, with the ruling that the terror attack in July was ‘insufficient grounds’ to justify it.  Ya think?

I’ve tried to write something each day since the horrendous truck attack in Nice, but my words seemed so inadequate I couldn’t bring myself to post them.
Today marks a week since a deranged psychopath purposely drove a truck into the Bastille Day crowds, intentionally killing as many innocent people as possible.

In the space of a week, the Promenade des Anglais has gone from one of the most beautiful spots in the world, to a horrific body-strewn massacre, to a sequestered crime scene, to a spontaneous memorial with shocked and silent mourners covering each and every blood stain with flowers, candles, notes, photos, and stuffed animals.  Half the Prom remained closed most of the week as these early piles of flowers grew into mountains…

Every day I walked the trace of the carnage, passing so, so many piles of flowers… and every day, the final stack sent cold shivers: a circle of people silently staring at a pile of dirt and rocks in the middle of the road, the spot where the killer was finally shot dead.  People spit on it as they passed, or violently flung another handful of dirt.  Many of the stones contained anguished messages like “Assassin!” “Burn in Hell!” and “Why, why, why??”

A ceremony was held on the Prom which attracted 40,000 mourners, all still in shock but with some lashing out, searching for someone, anyone, to blame for this unimaginably senseless act.

That night, knowing that the Prom had to eventually reopen, hundreds of people gathered in the moonlight to create a mile-long human chain, passing all the flowers, notes and toys, one-by-one, from the spot where each victim was felled, to a memorial at the gazebo, and when that was full, they lined the seaside.

One week later, the Promenade des Anglais is open, and if you lived in a cave and had no knowledge of what transpired, you would not know that anything was out of whack until passing the stretch that is lined with flowers.  The Old Town is less crowed than a normal high-season, but in a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, plus an unwillingness to be cowed by fear, it is absolutely full of life.  The beaches are full of sunbathers, the beach volleyball court is active day and night, the street musicians are out in force, the restaurants and full, and there was even an open air salsa dance in the Place Palais de Justice last night.

The funerals are just starting and the full list of victims has only just now been released.  A third of the victims were Muslim, including the first woman that the killer veered onto the sidewalk to hit, a mother of 7 who was wearing a traditional headscarf.  This is not about religion, or politics, just immense sadness.

For more details about what happened that day, click The Bastille Day Truck Attack

Photos by Best of Nice

In a state of shock after the attacks in Paris, the city of Nice has predictably doubled down on police and military presence, and cancelled all major city-sponsored events and shows over the weekend.  But even though public gatherings this weekend were strictly forbidden by the Mayor’s office, this didn’t stop at least 200 people from spontaneously gathering Saturday evening at Place Garibaldi for a candle-lit homage to mourn the victims of the Paris attacks.  Unfortunately, however, they weren’t the only ones to show up, as a well-known and rather vocal group of thirty barged on the scene, singing a loud and aggressive version of the French national anthem and brandishing signs with anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant slogans like ‘France for the French’.

It is worth noting the local Muslim community’s reaction to the Paris tragedy: immediate and unanimous condemnation, responding to the senseless spilling of innocent blood by a massive turnout to donate their own blood to the local blood bank, joining other Nicois of all faiths, in a most personal show of solidarity to help the hundreds of injured.  The line at the blood bank went around the block with many waiting up to 3 hours to donate.  The influx was so overwhelming that over a 120 were asked to come back Monday.