Weather: still crap

View over Nice from near my place



The Eglise Jeanne d'Arc, Nice



Inside the Eglise Jeanne d'Arc



Statues inside the church






Frescoes inside the church




Not to moan about the weather again, but everyone around here I talk to seems to agree that this is the worst winter in, like, forever, so lucky me! It's turned quite cold again - I took my coat out last night, I thought I'd seen the last of it for the season, but apparently not.

Anyway, the point is that my walkies have been suspended pending sunshine. This weekend is, I'm happy to say, supposed to be nice, but I might be meeting up with someone on Saturday (or not) and on Sunday, it is of course the start of the F1 season (yay yay yay yay yay) so I will be firmly ensconced chez moi, in front of t' telly, BBC liveblog scrolling away on my laptop, in utter F1-related bliss I hope!

So no big walks, but today I did walk down to Nice Nord (Nice a bit South from my perspective...) and visited the Eglise Jeanne d'Arc, which is very weird-looking and bears the distinction of being the first building of note that I saw upon arrival in Nice. It, in fact, gave me the opportunity to try out my best "c'est quoi, ça?" on the driver. It's a big, concrete, futuristic confection which I would have guessed was from the sixties, but was actually begun in 1914, interrupted by the death of its architect and the First World War, and eventually finished in 1933. I actually quite liked it - very cavernous, cold and peaceful/eerie inside. I had the place all to myself, but they're doing restoration on the outside, so there was a chorus of muffled clangs which just seemed to make the place more redolent of an old crypt or something, so that's all good in my book. It had lots of frescoes which were actually the Stations of the Cross but had the vibe of a less demonic Dantean scene to me. I will put photos up - note that the place is very dimly-lit indeed, so the flash gives a bit of a false impression.

After that, I went to the big Monoprix supermarket on Jean Medicin, which is notable only because the woman in line behind me was spouting off, very loudly and repeatedly "I'm neither a homosexual nor lesbian" (um, the difference being?) "and I don't like to be taken for one!" I have no idea what set her off, but I was most amused to see that she was purchasing a bottle of 'Gayelord' brand vitamins! Ha! Maybe that's what caused the confusion (gay cruising 101: go to Monoprix, pick up a bottle of Gayelord vitamins, and lurk in the fruit & veg aisle...). Also, she had a bottle of rum, which, much to my disappointment, was not of the Mount Gay variety :( Nice to see that French people also sort of shuffle and exchange awkward smiles when confronted with public crazy.

Anyhoo, that is all! Oh, no, wait PS in news that will interest no-one - my epilator broke last week, sad times, I ordered a new one off Amazon.co.uk on the 6th of March and it came today! I really must applaud that level of service. Although I will say that it appears to have been dispatched from France, which means there is really no excuse for the fact that it would have cost about twice the price had I bought it off Amazon.fr. Tut tut!