The Bay of Angels

I saw a post on Facebook late last night not long before I was due to turn in for the night, it referenced bad news coming out of Nice, I immediately switched over to Sky News and watched the horror unfold, I was firstly numbed, then shocked, then angry and worried for my friends, some of whom I am great friends with, and some of whom I know only fleetingly, yet they all occupied my thoughts and I began messaging/Facebooking them all and kept checking their statuses.  Initial reports of 30 dead, then 40 then more.....I think I fell asleep around 02:30 in the chair, woke up freezing and went to bed, as soon as my eyes opened, something I never do, I put the TV on and saw the death toll had risen to over 80.  As I type now, it is 84.

Social Media

I've been to Paris - and I love Paris, and I was horrified by the shocking terrorist attack from that part of France.  As we all are.  But Nice, Nice is more to me than just a place I visit on my down time, it is actually a place of work for me, it is a place I have spent months of my life in, it is a place where I've made countless great friends not only of French descent, but from all over the world.  It is a place where the GPA team and I stay year in year out and a place where the GPA team and I dine, drink and have some of the most memorable days & nights of my life.  It is a place I speak about on a daily basis as I talk to clients old and new about going to the Monaco GP, stay in Nice I tell them, it is a wonderful city, you'll love it.  I've now directed thousands and thousands of people to go, including family and friends, they all come home with a universal love of the place, the people, the food and that most wonderful French/Italian mix.   It is a place my daughter and I have gone to almost every year, and every year we go we come home with new memories of a wonderful time.

2008 Promenade des Anglais 

I cannot focus on anything today other than the news from Nice.  And everything I see on the TV is so familiar to me, the hotels, the streets, the restaurants, this could have so easily happened in my own town.  That familiarity is tainted by what looks like a war zone, the beautiful resort I know and love has been brutalised by a fanatic, and I am unable to take my mind off of if.  Yet, this didn't happen in Dundee, it happened in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, a sun-drenched oasis of the bluest ocean, the most architecturally stunning buildings and a 6km sea front with the most French of French drivers whizzing by all day long on the Promenade des Anglais.  I'm well over a million profanities uttered on that road as another scooter cuts me up, or I sit in traffic charging to / from the airport as every bloody traffic light goes against me....."Merde!!!" 

My first ever trip to Nice seems so long ago now, because it was so long ago now!  Would have been around this time of year, with my daughter Ellis and my now ex-wife on a family trip in 2001.  The managing director of the company I worked for at that time had an apartment in the SoF and offered to pick us up and the airport and take us to lunch.  I discovered five things that very first day:

Sancerre Rouge Fresh

1) Nice is beautiful - and all I'd done is driven from the airport to this "fancy" hotel
2) The Negresco Hotel is a truly incredible building of breathtaking beauty and French eccentricity
3) Chilled red Sancerre wine.  "Sancerre Rouge Fresh" (ooh la la!)
4) The aforementioned drink makes one very drunk when consumed in vast quantities
5) The terrace of the Negresco is perhaps THE best introduction to a city I've had ever.

We would spend a week in Nice, then drive to Maranello to

Green cough medicine visible! Nice 03

visit Ferrari, back to Monaco and a couple of nights in the Mirabeau Hotel in Monaco, which is no longer a hotel but an apartment block.  I walked the GP track and fell in love with the whole place.  Almost as soon as I got home, I made it clear I needed to go back and watch the Monaco Grand Prix, and so with some internet friends, the seed of GPA was born as throughout 2002 I put a package together.  In 2003 I returned with a group of friends and we stayed in Nice for the Monaco Grand Prix in which, and I am choosing the most polite word I can, would be described as a "shit-hole" of a hotel.  Nevertheless, we made the best of it and had the time of our lives.  We would drink "green medicine" cocktails on the Promenade des Anglais on our first night and spent so much time in restaurants drinking Sancerre Rouge

Ellis at the hotel on PdA in Nice 2001

Fresh, eating sensational pizza's and cotes de boeuf!  When I got home my sides and jaw ached for days and it took me a while to realise this was from all the laughter on that trip, I suspect I laughed more in that short time than I did combined for the remainder of the year, the fantastic friends with me at that time will attest that is not an exaggeration.  Since then,  I return to this magical, friendly place and every year I enjoy myself far more than I should, I laugh a lot more than I normally do, and inevitably I come back with new friends, be they Scandinavian, be they Germans or be they French.  This cosmopolitan haven brings out the sunnier side of people, little surprise given the surroundings and the weather.  I guess I've kept the vineyards in the Loire valley in good stead over that time, and I can tell you so many stories from my years of visiting there, but I honestly don't have the time, it'd need to be a book and certainly not a blog on the W.W.W.

Erm, she got in the way......;)

Oh, did I mention the beach?  It is lined with various "private" beaches with ever more elaborate loungers, thicker padding and bigger parasols.  The restaurants on the beach all offer great food (the food thing is a thing in France - everyone knows this right?  If not, go to France - eat their food.....) which is a bit of a fusion of French and Italian.  Because Nice used to be part of Italy but is now French, makes sense really.  The water-sports rival anything you'd get in one of these Med resort places, inflatables, parasols, jetski's and power boats, and around every 90 seconds or so, another multi-million dollar yacht sails by en-route to Monaco, or Cannes or St Tropez, and every 45 seconds or so, another beautiful bikini clad female catches your line-of-sight and spoils yet another photograph of the stunning Azur Med.

So this Nice - the Nice I'm describing, the one I've genuinely lost count of the times I've visited, the hotels I've stayed in - that's the Nice I remember, that's the Nice that we must all focus on and that's the Nice that GPA will continue to promote as one of the most sensational places in the world.

Negresco 2008 - Bastille Day

 And best of all for us Brits, it's only a couple of hours on a plane to get to, and you can fly there from just about any airport these days because it's so popular.

I've searched through my photo's today, and am smiling ear-to-ear, brimming full of some of my happiest times, if you've been before you'll know exactly what I mean, and I urge you to do the same.  Find that folder on your computer with those photos, look back and enjoy, I almost guarantee you'll have some of the Promenade des Anglais.  Share them on your Facebook, share the happy times you had in Nice, tell all your friends.  If you've not been to Nice, here's a tip.  Go.  Get on one of those EasyJet/Jet2/BA flights and go for a long weekend, stay somewhere in Nice, go to one of the private beaches, enjoy a cocktail, yacht-spot, accidentally take photos of bikini clad lovelies, order Sancerre Rouge Fresh and walk as much of the Promenade with the most stunning blue ocean you'll see in Europe.  Go to the Love café on Rue Massena and have the best club sandwich you'll ever have (I swear I am the virtuoso of Club Sandwiches - ask Ellis), enjoy the street performers on Rue Massena, the beautiful sculptures in the square, go to Old Town and spend a day lost in medieval side streets, eat some of the most bizarre flavours of ice cream, find the restaurant where Madame does a little sing-song when the mood takes her, order a massive stein of frothy beer, climb Le Fort at the end of the Promenade, go to the Old Port and try to add up how many billons of Euros of yachts are berthed, go to the war monument and shop till you drop on Jean Médecin dodging the Star-Trek-Esq trams with the whooshing doors.

Ellis won this at Stars & Bars many years ago!

To my friends in the SoF, you know who you are and you know you are in my thoughts and my heart.  I will be in the SoF from July 30th to August 6th, I hope to see you all there, especially in Nice, especially on the Promenade des Anglais.  Don't think about this, just do it - join me for dinner or drinks - let me know so that we might toast your good health, your wonderful city and that je ne sais quoi that Nice will forever offer to those lucky enough to enjoy its magic.

Stay safe, stay loved.
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