Sojourn: 55. Cote d'Azure

Nice is a very large city.

It is situated on the most beautiful of bays - the Bay of Angels.

Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse. The population is about 1 million in an area of 721 km2.

Around 350 BC, the Greeks founded a permanent settlement here and called it Nikaia, after Nike, the goddess of victory. Through the ages, the town has changed hands many times. For centuries it was a dominion of Savoy (France/Switzerland/Italy), then became part of France after which it was returned to Italy until it was re-annexed by France in 1860.

The natural beauty of the Nice area and its mild Mediterranean climate came to the attention of the English upper classes in the second half of the 18th century, when an increasing number of aristocratic families took to spending their winter here. The city's main seaside promenade, the Promenade des Anglais - the Walkway of the English - owes its name to the earliest visitors to the resort.

Nice has the second largest hotel capacity in the country and it is one of its most visited cities, receiving 4 million tourists every year. It also has the third busiest airport in France after the two main Parisian ones.

This trip we chose to have a view rather than access to the beach. That decision finds us in an old art-deco apartment, high on the hill of an entirely residential area, directly above the Port.

It is comfortably traditional with big doors opening to the balcony on two sides.

We are not as close to the port area as we had hoped, but the view across the bay is stunning. The heat haze and glare is making all my photographs look pink and milky - I'm hoping for improvement.

The other reason we chose this apartment is because it has a garage. Car parking all along the Cote d'Azure is difficult and discouraged.

The Corsica-Sardinia ferries come into the port directly in front of us every day.

We drove along the Promenade des Anglaise, all the way to the airport. On the way back we were lucky enough to find a car park, so Paul had his first swim in the Mediterranean here on the free beach in the late afternoon. No sand, only pebbles.

Yesterday we drove to Monaco. On the way we had the opportunity to stop at a look-out point with a great view of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferat. On the narrow peninsula to the left of centre is where I read that the Rothschilds, Elton John, Sting, Tina Turner and other well knowns have their villas. The mountains all along the coast are very steep - this photo was taken from the middle corniche at an altitude of 530m.

We managed to get a parking spot on the street next to the Royal Monaco Yacht Club, just where the little red electric boat ferries people from one side of the harbour to the other. Suits and tourists side-by-side.

No lack of money here at the yacht club.

It was absolutely stifling as we walked about. No hint of a breeze. It was like being at the bottom of a teacup - wall to wall buildings towering up the rock face in every direction. There is so little land that new buildings are erected over the roadways and roads are tunnelled underneath existing buildings and through the rock itself. The best tunnelling engineers in the world cut their teeth here in Monaco.

At one point we came across a Rolls Royce and a couple of shiny black Mercedes vans in front of a huge motor yacht with a hundred or so people milling around. Some drifted off. Some more arrived. Some were there for the long haul. No one saw anything.

This was the centre of attention. Madame Gu she was called. More staff than a hotel, all trying to look busy.

Paul decided to try for a swim closer to home, so we ventured to the area nearest to our apartment opposite the entrance to the Port. The big Corsica-Sardinia ferries look like toys from our balcony and seem to only squeeze through an impossibly small entrance when docking. But the entrance is actually huge and the Port very large when seen from this angle.

This area around the Port is one of the oldest areas of Nice. You can still see some of the old walls and battlements. You can also see how close the shipping channel is to the rocks (and the swimmers). This is where the big ferries turn.

There are scores of swimmers in the water here and just as many propped on, under or amongst the rocks. Paul is down there somewhere. I'm up here in a breezeway under a pine tree.

We had a splendid view of the Bastille Day fireworks over the bay. The water was full of small and not so small craft that later motored off to homes unknown.

Bastille Day is the 14th July and is the French National Day. It commemorates the storming of the Bastille in Paris in 1789 which was the culmination of a violent revolution that had begun two days earlier - and of course continued until the monarchy was overthrown and the revolutionaries themselves ousted by Napoleon Bonaparte.