Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Parc du Château, Nice

{The view from the park overlooking Nice and it's promenade}

    In all the times we have been to Nice, we have only been to the park that overlooks the city and the 'Bay of Angels' twice. This being partly because we figured after one visit, there is not too much else to see and the other part (going on a limb here and saying this is the numero uno reason) is that is up a lot of stairs, and I mean a lot. Nice is already a walking city so if you don't hit the park early, you most likely won't want to muster up the energy to tackle to stairs later. But, repeat after me, 'it is so worth it'. The views alone are breathtaking and the feeling that you are not in the city is rare to find...in the city. And it seems like every time I go, I discover something else I didn't see before. Like today, I spent the day in Nice alone just wandering the streets and had no plan in mind (except that I needed to hit the park early because I knew fatigue/laziness would set in later). Well that last sentence is not totally true. The soldes (France's equivalent to America's Black Friday sales) are going on and Nice does have good shopping so that might have been a contributing factor also. So I headed to the park with camera in hand and followed numerous cobblestone paths etched out of the mountain towards what I thought was running water. And if I'll be darned, the last path led me straight to a waterfall overlooking the city. A waterfall we had never known existed. How could we have been up there two times before and not seen this? Knowing there was no way to answer this question, I moved on and gave myself credit for braving the stairs this time and went with the old proverb, Better late than never.

***Little Disclaimer...Maybe the reason we had never seen the waterfall before was the first time we went to the park with friends visiting from home, we reached the top at around 6:30 pm only to be told that the park was closed by a not so nice park ranger. This ranger followed us and herded us like sheep all the way down in record time. FYI, check what time the park closes before ascending.







{Vibrant colors of the 'old town' and the snow capped alps in the background}


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