Vive la France (it's Nice)!

Bonjour! I'm finally in France (I've been looking forward to this leg of the trip for a while - it's great to be able to speak the language to a greater extent, makes life so much easier), all settled into our hostel in Nice. Before I write about the overnight train and subsequent traveling that got us here, I should finish off the rest of Venezia.

Our second-last day in Venice was to be spent seeing all the big tourist sights in Piazza San Marco (basilica, tower, Doge's Palace), but in the end we only got into the Palace, since another huge group of tourists seemed to have descended upon the watery city, making lines a bit ridiculous. The Doge was the symbolic head of Venice-the-state, his situation much like the current Queen of England's, except he was essentially kept a prisoner in his palace, not allowed to leave without permission from the state (and even then he could only escape for a few days). His digs certainly were luxurious, all marble and wood and gold leaf. Tinteretto paintings and murals abounded in the rooms where the state made its decisions, and I found myself getting a bit fed up with his overwrought depictions of mythological and biblical stories.

After all the solemn dark wood and painted 16th-to-17th-century drama, it was a relief to walk into a small, unassuming room and find not just one, but three Hieronymus Bosch paintings staring me in the face! Seeing his works in person just confirms how far ahead of his time the painter was, managing to stay in the good graces of the noblemen who sponsored his work by sticking mostly to religious themes, but experimenting with surreal imagery and grotesque figures that would have been out of place in most serious religious paintings of the time. His paintings are also the kind you can peer into for ages - I was finding creepy little creatures amongst the twisted human forms in his depiction of Hell each time I looked more closely. I wish I could find an image of the painting I was looking at - there was the most hilarious little turtle-creature-with-thick-glasses looking myopically at a book in the corner and he was kind of charming, for a beast in Hell.

Apart from the pleasant Bosch-surprise, the best part of the palace were the dungeons. To get to them you walk across the Bridge of Sighs, a Venetian icon that fascinated me when I was little, the story being that convicted criminals would look out the finely carved windows of the covered bridge and sigh as they glimpsed their last sight of Venice before being thrown into the dank dungeons. The dungeons themselves were pretty basic - stone cells and big, heavy doors and iron bars, but I overheard a tour leader saying that the prison had been in use up to the 1920s, which certainly made it a bit more interesting.

The next day we checked out of our room and spent the day wandering the city, as our train didn't leave until almost 23:00. We did manage to get into the basilica in Piazza San Marco, whose interior glitters with fantastic mosaics, but didn't feel like battling the tourist hordes to go up the tower.

The train ride was a little exciting, as we'd booked a couchette for the night trip, allowing me to actually sleep (due to my bad back I have trouble sleeping sitting up) for a few hours of the trip. The compartment was darling - four little blue bunks that came with a nice blanket and a pillow - but the ride itself made sleeping more difficult than expected, as the car we were on made the strangest clunking sounds and kept waking me up. After a restless sleep, the porter woke us up at 7 a.m. to tell us that there was a strike (my first thought was, "ah, welcome to France," but it seems as if the Italian trains were the ones on strike) and we'd have to change trains. Thankfully that switch was drama-free, and we got to Nice no more than 10mins late.

Sadly, the rain followed us from Venice, so we had to slog to the hostel in a dismal downpour, then squish over to a cafe, since we weren't able to check in until 11:00. Thankfully the cafe provided us with coffee, and me with a delectable omlette avec fromage, which made us feel a little more human. When we were finally able to check in we discovered that our roomate is a fellow Canadian (it's another 4-bed dorm), and that she's a registered chef. This led to us deciding to all chip in for groceries and make dinner in the hostel kitchen tonight.

Since our time here is so short, we decided that (to make the visit as stressless as possible) all we really wanted to see in Nice was the Musee de Marc Chagall, and, lucky us, it happens to be walking distance from the hostel! We walked up this afternoon, and wow was it worth it. There are works from every part of his career, and the space they hang in is absolutely beautiful, tucked away on a hill and surrounded by cypress and olive trees. Chagall's paintings are stunning - his use of bright colours and childlike shapes (especially the omnipresent chickens and goats that seem to pop up in most of the scenes) makes each a pleasure to look at, and the scale of many of the works invites you to fall into the story and lose yourself in a kaleidoscope world. I fell in love with one painting in particular, (please ignore my butchering of the title) 'Adam and Eve Expelled from the Garden'. It shows a more optimistic view of the fall of man (and woman), as the angel looks more benevolent than angry, the couple ride trimphantly out of Eden on a rooster (symbol of fertility), and flying fish and goat-birds flit around the blue-green foliage, looking nothing less than joyous. Such a lovely painting!

Now it's time to meet and get the groceries for dinner - more from Marseilles most likely (and I must not forget to tell you about the nice waiter we had at lunch today).