Anna Rivini goes to the Corso in Nice, one of the colorful parades of Carnival, every year and never tires of it. C’était super beau, she said of the Sunday afternoon Corso on Place Masséna. Here are some pictures she took there.

Remember, this year’s theme is the Blue Planet. You’ll see below, that some group thinks that President Obama might come to the rescue. Others are simply hoping for the best. And others, apparently, aren’t so sure.

- Photos and text: Anna Rivini

The first Battle of Flowers of 2010! An exciting tradition of Nice’s Carnival and an important part of the festivities.

It is a tradition where beauty and the ephemeral go together. Large crowds and colorful characters fill the Promenade, dancing and having fun.

Even when the weather is cold and cloudy, like yesterday, the show is magnificent, full of poetry and color.

Poster for the 2010 Carnaval de Nice

Anna Rivini attended the start of the Carnaval de Nice yesterday to get a first glimpse of the arrival of this year’s king.

Yesterday, despite the cold, there were a lot of people on Place Masséna for the arrival of the float of the King of the Planet Blue.

This year’s Carnival takes a humorous and derisive view of ecology, which is represented in blue for the occasion.

Hier, beaucoup de monde sur la place Masséna malgré le froid pour l’arrivée du char du “Roi de la Planète Bleue”.

Le thème du Carnaval cette année tourne avec humour et dérision autour de l’écologie présentée en bleue pour l’occasion.

Text and photos by Anna Rivini

Snow in Nice, it’s rare and magical. I put on my boots and go outside.

Nice, the beach. Feb. 11, 2010. (c) Anna Rivini

The snow is falling, children are happy. I decide to go in the Parc du Chateau, a very lovely place where you can see almost all Nice.

Nice, a glimpse of the sea. Feb. 11, 2010. (c) Anna Rivini

The view on the Baie des Anges and the white roofs of the Old Town is fantastic.

View over Nice and the Bay of Angels. Feb. 11, 2010. (c) Anna Rivini

Even with the snow, Nice keeps his beautiful colors, and reminds us that Carnaval is not far off.

View over the port. Feb. 11, 2010. (c) Anna Rivini

By Vincent Mooney

It’s January and my friend Michael is outside cutting wood. It’s t-shirt weather, the street shines like a pretty stone in the bright light; already there’s a feeling that summer isn’t far away. I went walking on the beach yesterday with Anna and the waves swooshed up to our shoes as we laughed and jumped aside. There were a group of people having a picnic for New Year, keeping the seagulls happy with scraps here and there.

It’s hard to think of a better place to be right now. No crowds, space to move around the streets and shops, a sense that we’re all getting ready for something exciting. My beloved grandmother got me thinking and dreaming of Nice when I was very young. She would tell me it was always sunny and warm, and maybe someday I would live there. My grandmother always told me things like she believed I could do them.

Michael is finished cutting and is putting up shelves. I gaze at the sky and everything seems right. What is it about this place that is so magical, so many moments that just click; from a smile on the street to being greeted with a kiss or a warm handshake. Taking time to talk in a café, chatting to the owner in the bakery. No rush. I’ve never seen anybody rushing in Nice. There must be a law against it written and forgotten in a dusty old book in the town hall.

Anna’s cat is called Sinbad. He’s a bit of a pirate. Apart from biting and scratching everyone he doesn’t do much. He sometimes thinks he’s a rottweiler and growls at the door when strangers arrive. Sinbad and his pirate attitude go hand in hand with this town. He doesn’t care what anybody thinks of him. Does his own thing, at his own pace. His life is about whatever is most enjoyable in the moment. No fuss. The complicated stuff can wait.

“Carnaval” starts in two weeks. The “Bataille des Fleurs” leaves happy crowds strolling on the Promenade laden with fresh blooms. This joyous parade of nature’s beauty announces winter’s end and draws back the curtain on the glorious summer that awaits. The processions are a tapestry of colours; thrilling sounds and the fireworks display on the final day seems to bring all of Nice together to celebrate. The King of the Carnival, a huge papier maché creation, is ceremoniously burned on a boat in the Baie des Anges. Sinbad would heartily approve.

Life here is focused on food and fun. Most people develop a strong resistance to hard work once they’re here. Total immunity is possible with time.

Michael is finished putting up the shelves. There will be plenty of time to read the books on them, and plenty of visitors who will love Nice so much they’ll stop just to talk about how it moves and delights them.
Nowhere’s perfect. Nice isn’t perfect. Some days, it just feels perfect.

-Vincent Mooney is a Irishman living in Nice. He is the owner of Auzuromantique, a shop selling rare books, less rare books, and art. www.azuromantique.com

By Stephanie Sommer

Back safely in Nice, I again turned my attention to the Carnival, which came to an end on Sunday night. The burning of the king in the sea marks the end of the festivities and the start of Lent. Legend has it that by burning the King, he will then rise again next year from the ashes to reign once again during the Carnival.

It was one of the more frenzied nights we experienced so far. At 9 pm tens of thousands of revelers were gathered in Place Massena to escort the King to the sea, and with loud music playing everyone was again dancing in the streets, working themselves up for the ritual burning. The Silly String and confetti were flying everywhere; I had hoped that maybe they would have sold out of the stuff by the end but it was actually even worse this night. I saw one little girl of maybe 5 or 6 being completely covered by Silly String by her parents and elder siblings, and afterwards they threw confetti on her. My friend Gaby wondered aloud as to whether this might constitute child abuse, but the child seemed to be enjoying it.

When the King started to move, the crowd roared bloodthirstily and followed the King down to the sea. My friends and I raced ahead to the Promenade des Anglais to take pictures of the procession, and I got a good shot of the King as it turned the corner. Afterwards we realized that the crowds at the beach were so immense we would never be able to see the King out at sea.

This is where my official Carnival press badge truly came in handy. (Thank you Gary, for arranging that!) I found the most official-looking person in the crowds, flashed my badge and asked where the ‘press area’ was. We soon found ourselves in a private viewing area on the Promenade des Anglais, directly in front of the boats out at sea that were set up for the burning and the fireworks afterwards.

But the King was already out there! How was that possible when we had just left him at the corner? This is when I found out that they don’t actually burn the massive grotesque King we had all seen in the parades, but in instead an effigy made of paper maché. Considering that the real King is made mostly of hard plastic this actually makes sense.

As we waited, the crowds behind us grew more bloodthirsty and you could hear chants of “Brulé!” (Burn!) Suddenly the announcement came and there was a brief pause in the yelling and screaming as they lit the King on fire. As the fire took, the revelers found their voices again and they roared through the 5-6 minutes it took to burn the effigy. As the fire died down, so did the voices, save for one child’s voice who yelled out one last comment: “Au revoir, Sarkozy!” We all laughed. It is pretty evident, the longer I stay here, what most of the French think of Sarkozy at the moment. Personally I don’t think he’s that bad but the French president’s popularity certainly seems to be at a low point here in Nice. “Sa femme si belle”—his pretty wife, however, is all right, said the security guard sitting next to me.

Immediately after the King’s burning the fireworks began, and it was evident where a good portion of the Carnival budget was; these were ten times more spectacular than the Menton fireworks. Four boats out at sea shot off fireworks in tune to approximately ten different songs as we watched from our advantageous position. (Thanks again, Gary and the Nice Office de Tourisme!) The fireworks seemed to go on forever.

Then all of a sudden it was over, and as my friends and I waded our way through the Silly String-and-confetti-filled streets we noticed that the formerly frenzied crowd had lost its energy and vitality. Everyone shuffled back to their home or hotel. The party was over, and we all knew it was time to take off our masks and return to our real lives.

By Stephanie Sommer

Concurrent with Nice’s great Carnival that I’ve been blogging about, Menton, the pretty French town sitting between the Italian border and Monaco, has been holding its annual Lemon Festival. If, like me, you have visited the Cote d’Azur many times but for some reason never thought to go to Menton (known as the City of Lemons), allow me to twist your arm a bit. 

Menton distinguishes itself from the rest of the pack by having a subtropical climate that allows it to grow citrus fruits (particularly the lemon) and holds many French awards for being the top ‘floral’ town in France. According to the Tourist Office, botanists have been coming here since the 1800s to plant rare species of flowers and plants because they can thrive in this climate. About 115 acres (46 hectares) of park space surround the town, with contemporary gardens created in the very heart of the city, which is where I was last Friday evening, viewing the “jardins illuminés” (illuminated gardens).

A citrus mosaic welcomev visitors to the Menton Lemon Festival. Photo Gabriela Seglias

I spent an afternoon checking out Menton last week, and what strikes me as most special about the town is that although it’s on the coast and therefore should be loaded with tourists and little old ladies with tiny dogs, it isn’t, so you can walk through the pedestrian area without having to watch your step.

Menton isn’t quaint per se, but it has an elegant feel that is sometimes lacking in Nice. It is one of the few towns in France where the population is actually getting younger, and it also has a clean feel to the downtown area.

Country house made of citrus fruit. Photo G. Seglias

 This year is the 76th Lemon Festival. It runs about three weeks and ends on March 4. The theme this year is “Menton celebrates the Music of the World.” And indeed the night we went everything from African tribal to American country music was being played in different venues in the gardens. My friends and I were delighted; a town that actually encourages music and dancing is a town that we can love. 

You should know that my army of friends marches on its stomach and that my friend Gabriela in particular can’t pass a tarte au citron (lemon meringue pie) without wanting a taste.

We stopped at an Italian restaurant across the street from the beach and promenade. This restaurant, called La Tagliatelle, was absolutely fantastic and came complete with two huge Italian waiters. They’re brothers and they look like Mama breast-fed them pasta from the day they were born. Jolly as they were it was the clientele who spoke volumes: La Tagliatelle must be a badly kept secret amongst the Italians as I heard no French, only Italian spoken at all the tables. (Remember, Italy is only a few miles away.) We each had a different pasta and left nothing behind. The tarte au citron was fabulous, but fellow student Andre and I went for Le Colonel, a lemon sorbet topped with lemon vodka topped with a tiny bit of whipped cream. Did I mention that this is why I will never be skinny?

Stephanie dancing with a clown. Photo G. Seglias

With renewed energy we attacked the night garden event, and five minutes later a big stuffed clown thing (see the picture—your guess is as good as mine) was flirting and dancing with me. “Vous êtes mechant, vous. Arrete!” I said, shaking my finger at him when he tried to touch my bum while we were dancing. Only in France.

Swiftly moving on, we came upon a quite good mariachi band which had us shaking our booties once more. Through the evening we visited (more like frolicked) amongst several other musical venues: country, disco, tango, rock-‘n-roll, etc. The venues themselves were each shaped a bit differently—there was a house, a chateau, a boat, a car, even a ‘moulin rouge’—but they were all composed of lemons and oranges! I must ask the tourist office later this week just how many citrus fruits are actually used in the fabrication of this tiny village-cum-garden.

Open for dégustation throughout were small stands selling some of the best limoncello (sweet digestive liqueur made of lemons) I have ever tasted, and at the far end of the gardens Grand Marnier (makers of the superb orange liqueur) had set up a creperie that was serving warm Grand Marnier and coffee. By this time it was late and we were tired, so we all had a glass of Grand Marnier, tipped it in admiration to the magical music village, and caught the last train back to Nice.

By Stephanie Sommers

While Nice is holding its Carnival the pretty Riviera town of Menton, on the other side of Monaco, is holding its Lemon Festival. I went to the Citron festivities on Friday night but I’ll write about that later this week because I want now to tell about a rather gorgeous Sunday I passed in Nice’s Carnival epicenter. I could also write at length about how we finally had a beautiful sunny day, not too cold, and how my friends and I gathered together on the Promenade des Anglais along with a few thousand tourists to watch the parades. But what I really want to do is write a love letter about a very typical Niçois street food called the socca.
Socca is a thin, moist-on-the-inside, crispy-on-the-outside pancake made of chickpea flour, olive oil and salt and baked in huge pizza pans in wood burning ovens. It is delicious, especially if, like me, you have been living it up all weekend and you are moving just a bit slower than usual on a Sunday afternoon. It is served on little paper plates. You just add pepper.

I’m not the only one who loves socca. In the Albert 1er gardens next to Place Massena, the Carnival held a socca party and everyone queued for over half an hour just to get a plate of socca. The line was so long that kids waiting with their parents were bored silly and as a result used up most of their Silly String cans on all of us waiting in line. Other targets included the wandering bands of Spanish singers, a few clowns and the occasional palm tree. On most Sundays the queues are just as long at the socca restaurants in old town Nice.

Socca

The socca in “Vieux Nice,” the old part of town, is served alongside other Niçois specialties such as pissaladiere (caramelized onion pizza sometimes with bits of anchovy and black olives), pan bagnat (little buns brushed with olive oil, then filled with green pepper slices, black olives, onion slices, anchovies, tomato slices and hard-boiled egg slices — all drizzled with vinaigrette), Niçois farcis (vegetables like zucchini, peppers and onions cut into bite size pieces and topped or stuffed with delicious fillings made of meat or fish or other vegetables), and beignets (shrimp or meat fillings dunked in a thick batter and deep fried). All of these are finger foods—although your fingers tend to get very greasy—and families, couples, and friends gather together at brunch time to sit at the picnic tables outside, eat some Niçois street food, and wash it all down with a glass of rosé. Yum!

So as I had a fabulous weekend (which also meant that once again I didn’t study enough) I am skipping writing about the Lemon Festival for the moment in order to pay homage to simple Niçois street food. I will pick up the Citron in a few days, but I leave you with this tasty preview: it’s all about lemons and oranges and a tasty little pie called the tarte au citron, a very French lemon meringue pie…

Oh no. I’ve made myself hungry again. That’s why, while I may not be fat, I will never be skinny.

By Stephanie Sommer

I am going to try hard not to turn this blog into a rant about Silly String.

Okay, here goes: the Corso Illuminé is the night parade that circles two times around Place Massena on Tuesday and Saturday nights. I’ve been to two corsos, or corsi, now and they are rather spectacular. There are enormous harlequins and huge floating caricatures of what would have entertained royalty back in the day, a rather fierce dragon (my personal favorite), and various groups of people from various countries who entertain us in between the grotesque processions with acrobatic dances, drum-playing or baton-twirling. All of these slowly pass by as the crowd heaves to and fro, filling in the spaces between each float. It is really interesting to see the spectators get up close and personal with the floats, and armed with cans of Silly String (my teacher told me the French call aerosol string cans “les boums,” like bombs) and confetti, they spray the h*** out of the floats, the groups, and each other until literally everybody and everything is covered in string and confetti.

Those of us who have chosen not to buy les boums and confetti are frequently targeted with stealth attacks from behind. It’s as if the boumeurs (think bombers) are saying, “Hey, you there, blocking my view and my chance to spray a float, this one’s for you!”
 
According to my teacher, Jean-Philip, this is actually much better than the alternative that was employed not so long ago. Years ago (I’m guessing pre-aerosol string days) they threw little plastic balls a bit bigger than bb pellets and which weighed a bit more than bb pellets (I’m guessing) as there were always a few eyes put out and, according to Jean-Philip, a couple of near deaths. As Carnival became increasingly popular with tourists from other countries they finally banned the pellets and switched to paper confetti and the infamous boums.

Enough ranting; I will now move on to the promised carnival trivia. As this year’s theme is King of Masquerades, it is fitting that I mention that the Nice Carnival was mentioned various times in the journals of royal patrons during the Middle Ages. It appears to have been particularly popular with dukes from France and Italy, and in 1889 the Prince of Wales (future Edouard Vll) came to light the procession stake to commence Carnival.

My favorite float, the dragon, is called a “babau” and first appeared as a float in 1882 to honor the tradition of grotesque mythology that is prevalent in most Carnival history. Here is where mythology and Catholicism meld together. Winter carnivals are now thought to be a celebration of the advent of Lent, which is why Mardi Gras (literally “Fat Tuesday”) commemorates the end of the Carnival period and incorporates a huge feast, to get ready for eating meagerly (specifically no meat) for the next 40 days. That is if you were a Catholic in the Middle Ages. Nowadays my Catholic friends usually resolve to give something up like sugar in their coffee or white wine. (Notice I didn’t say all wines.) Another interesting fact; apparently all manner of wild behavior and voluntary madness was allowed during this Carnival period as you would pay penance during Lent. Perhaps this explains the folly of Silly String.

By Stephanie Sommer

Honestly, someone should have warned me that the Bataille des Fleurs, the Battle of the Flowers, was not a contest between the flower floats in a parade but rather an actual ‘battle’ to catch the flowers being thrown at the spectators throughout the parade.

The Bataille took place Saturday afternoon on the Promenade des Anglais, the main street running parallel to the beach. I was seated in the bleachers thinking that I had lucked out for picture-taking because seated around me were hundreds of gentle, sedate senior citizens who would never jump up in front of my camera. And they were mostly couples, arms linked rather romantically (occasionally you saw one lone man with a few ladies seated around him; I’m guessing these lucky men were favorites of the widows’ crowd). “Aw, how cute” I thought, wishing I had someone special with me. My friend had lost her ticket and I was alone in the stands. My other friends hadn’t wanted to pay the hefty 25 euro fee to sit in the stands and had opted to stand in the crowds on the other side of the street.

The parade started with a bang, and loud Brazilian music accompanied by an even louder announcer scorched our ears. Well, at least my ears were scorched, and I did notice a few of the seniors dialing down their hearing aids.

The first to arrive were the scantily-dressed Brazilian dancers dressed like flowers. I had to laugh at the men trying hard not to look too much and the women acting scandalized when they caught their men ogling the dancers. One particularly Brazilian-shaped (read: nicely formed) dancer was sans flower and very nearly naked, shaking her bootie on uber-high heels and even I couldn’t help but stare.

The guy bottom left is gathering arms for the battle. Photos: SS.

Then the first float drenched in flowers arrived. It moved slowly. I noticed there was someone just walking alongside the float with a cartful of flowers. The walker then started throwing flowers into the stands. This caused a roar from the crowd, and suddenly everyone was lunging forward trying to catch flowers. Fights erupted between the men who were suposedly trying to catch the flowers in order to give them to their significant others. It was utter chaos. The formerly placid old men surrounding me who didn’t look like they could move unless assisted were jumping up like grasshoppers, sometimes knocking over their loved ones in the process. Several times a few aggressive younger men very nearly came to fisticuffs and their women gave each other the evil eye all in order to catch a flower or two.

The parade was fantastic—it’s hard even now to describe all of the various floats and costumes that passed by in the two-plus hours, and it’s even harder to choose from all of the wonderful photos I took, but I think the real event was the battle. As the parade was coming around a second time I noticed that they were now taking flowers from the floats themselves and throwing them at the crowds. The competition was getting fiercer. Slightly shaken, I decided to scurry out of there lest some loved-up senior decided to arm wrestle me for my armful of flowers. I’m glad I did. I still smell their scent as I write this.

My next blog will be the Corso Illuminé which is another parade held in the evening and I plan on filling you in on some Carnival trivia that Gary has handily sent me from Paris. Apparently the first Carnaval de Nice was held in 1294. I wonder if even back then the men were battling for flowers to impress their women; maybe that’s how French men have such a reputation for being romantic. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, Dear Readers.