Car Hire in Nice, France
The capital of the Riviera and also 5th largest city in France,
NICE, barely deserves its gleaming reputation. Living off higher property values and fat enterprise accounts, its ruling class has hardly developed from the 18th century Russian and English aristocrats who first put together their mansions here; today it's the reinters and retired people of numerous nationalities whose dividends and pensions provide the city its startlingly high ratio of per capita income to financial activity.
Their votes guaranteed the monopoly of municipal power held for many years from the right-wing dynasty, whose corruption was finally revealed in 1990 when mayor Jacques Médecin fled to Uruguay. He was finally extradited and jailed. Regardless of the disappearance of 400 million francs of taxpayers' money, public opinion remained within his favour. From his Grenoble prison cell, Médecin, who had twinned Nice with Cape Town while in the height of South Africa's apartheid regime, endorsed the former Front National member and close friend of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Jacques Peyrat, in the 1995 local elections. Peyrat won with ease.
Politics apart, Nice has some other reasons to be eligible; it as being one of the most dubious spots about the Riviera: it's a pickpocket's paradise; the traffic is a nightmare; miniature poodles seem like mandatory; phones are always vandalized; plus the beach isn't even sand. Nevertheless Nice still manages to be beautiful. The sun and the sea and the laid-back, affable Niçois cover a multitude of sins. The medieval rabbit warren of the old town, the Italianate facades of recent Nice and the rich, exuberant, fin-de-siècle residences that made the city among Europe's most trendy winter retreats have all survived intact. It has also retained mementos from its historical past, when the Romans reigned over are from here, and earlier still, when the Greeks started the location. Also, its bus and train connections make Nice, by far, the best base for exploring the other parts of the Riviera.
It doesn't take long to get a sense of the structure of Nice. Shadowed by mountains that curve right down to the Mediterranean east of its port, it still breaks up more or less into old and new. Vieux Nice, the old town, groups about the hill of Le Château, its boundaries signaled by boulevard Jean-Jaurès , designed on the course of the River Paillon. Over the seafront, the known promenade des Anglais runs a cool 5km until forced to curve inland by the sea-projecting runways of the airport. The central square, place Masséna, is at the bottom of the modern city's main street, avenue Jean-Médecin, while off to the north is the exclusive hillside suburb of Cimiez.
The
Chemins de Fer de la Provence runs is considered one of France's most beautiful and enjoyable rail routes from the station on Nice's rue Alfred Binet, 10 minutes' walk north of the gare SNCF (or buses #4 or #5). The road runs up the valley of the Var between Nice and Digne-les-Bains, climbing up through some remarkable scenery as it goes. Four trains run daily, year-round, and the whole journey takes about 3hrs.
Ljaon/jan/1v21
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