Nice in Nice

Just in case the recent trip to Okinawa wasn’t enough sun to get me through the winter, I just returned from a great little trip to Nice, France. There was an oceanography meeting there that I attended and presented some of the research from last summer’s “rock dentistry” work. The trip to southern France from Hokkaido is a long one, and it took over 30 hours of travel.

I arrived ragged and late on a Friday night to an unattended but quaint hotel in Vieux Nice. I had arranged my late arrival with the staff who provided me the door code to the staff entrance. I buzzed myself in and found an envelope with my name on it in the narrow hallway and climbed the tiny stairway in search of my room. The building that this hotel is in is in the range of 250 years old but it was smartly renovated in a way that kept the old charm (can tiny steep staircases be called charm?) while incorporating a comfortable room with a full bathroom (here is a link to that hotel – Villa la Tour).

The next morning I moved to an apartment in Vieux Nice where I would stay for the duration of the conference (here is a link to the company – I rented the Chateau View). January is low season in the south of France and holiday apartments in the heart of the tourist area can be gotten easily and relatively cheaply. My apartment had a great view of the Chateau that overlooks the city and was only 2 blocks from the fresh produce and flower markets, and 3 blocks from the crystal blue Mediterranean. On my first day I hit the market and got groceries and stretched my legs on the Promenade d’Anglais along the waterfront.

The view of the Chateau from my window.
The doorway to my apartment.


On Sunday I walked to the Port of Nice – it sounds far but isn’t. It was crammed full of elegant, massive boats and bordered by beautiful old architecture. I also checked out the morning sun overlooking the city from the Chateau. I was pretty jetlagged so had been awake since 3:30 am waiting until the sun came up before I let myself get out of bed. Next stop, I checked out the Museum of Modern Art. The art museums in Nice are all free entry (except the Chagall museum), all they wanted to know was where I was from for statistical purposes. The museum was interesting, but being relatively unfamiliar with art, I probably missed the point of a lot of it. This is the only one I recognized.



By the afternoon the sun had warmed the city and the crowds were loaded into the sunny patios sipping wine. I thought it wise to follow local custom and found a nice sunny patio and followed suit. I enjoyed a demi-pitchet of rosé at a café on the Place do Palais. In the square, 2 boys practiced football shots against an ancient doorway; wayward rebounds barely missed passing tourists. A drunken French woman paced in front of the café shouting in French at the patrons. Pigeons drifted in and out of the scene, barely missing my head on countless occasions. The sun eventually slipped away, so did the wine, the drunk woman continued.

The conference started that evening with registration and more wine. From then on, I was in meetings pretty much right through the week (I won’t recount the details here) with the exception of Thursday when I planned to take a short trip to Monaco to see the oceanography museum and aquarium. Unfortunately, the French labour unions had other plans and had organized a massive nation-wide strike as a protest against recent financial plans and bail-out schemes in France, meaning that there would be no buses or trains running to Monaco. I took the opportunity to do some shopping in the morning and of course went to the central park where the protests were happening.

French protesters.

I still am not sure what happened (Sarkozy agreed that he had made bad decisions…?) but the buses were back online by the afternoon and the marches and dissipated. I spent the afternoon in the incredible Monaco Aquarium and Oceanography Museum. Who would imagine that the second smallest country in the world would have such a great collection! Prince Albert do Monaco was an avid oceanographer – hence the collections.

The Oceanography Museum of Monaco

The building itself is perched precariously overlooking the Mediterranean. The aquarium was a perfect contrast to the one in Okinawa I had also visited recently. The collection itself contained many more invertebrate species than had been contained in Okinawa – and let’s face it, invertebrates make up 95% or more of all marine species so let’s start showing them to people so that I can stop looking like a raving invertebrate lunatic. The panels labelling each display contained interesting and well prepared scientific information and were presented in French, English, German and Italian (unlike Okinawa where very few panels were presented and you were luck to find any English). And they used unique and creative lighting in the tanks to highlite the colour diversity of the animals. Overall, the Monaco aquarium was much smaller and older than Okinawa, but somehow the smells of saltwater and corroding metal seemed to authenticate the experience.



The upper floor housed the museum where collections included old oceanography tools and equipment, marine mammal skeletons and sea-inspired artwork. One of my favourite items in the collection was the Bushnell “Tortoise” submarine. This contraption was built by an American, Bushnell, in 1774, and like many great scientific developments, was used in the American war of Independence against British ships (really not sure how effective this little tub would have been, maybe that is what the drill on the top was for).




The main floor contained their polar exhibit that pays tribute to early polar science expeditions and demonstrates the dire circumstances faced by our polar regions due to climate change. The exhibit pulls no punches in its message for global responsibility and action on climate change. Overall, I liked the museum for its scientific approach. Particularly evident in the polar display, they were not afraid to present complex scientific ideas to the public. Messages such as these are important and it is about time that institutions stop worrying about careful politics and get these messages out and in our faces – and maybe most important, we need to start listening.