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Nice

We found plenty to entertain us in Nice, including excellent, food, museums, shopping for Wendy and a long tram trip. 

 

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Nice

 

 

The Museum of Modern Art was particularly worthwhile.

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The Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain - MAMAC

 

 

Of course there is the famous beach which is less marvellous than we had anticipated as it consists of pebbles.   Being on the Mediterranean there is virtually no surf (in calm weather) but areas are given over to cafés restaurants and bars and there are large sand pits, kept in place by timber surrounds like one at a kindergarten, where sand has been spread over the stones to facilitate sunbaking. 

Along the promenade there are rows of seats on which sit people fully dressed in frocks, shirts and long pants, I even saw a tie, gazing out over the beach below where a proportion of the young women and all the young men sunbake topless.

 

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La Plage de Nice

 

 

We didn’t partake in either activity.

But there were plenty more museums and more shopping...

Nice was a fitting place to conclude a very nice visit to southern France.

 

 

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Travel

Spain and Portugal

 

 

Spain is in the news.

Spain has now become the fourth Eurozone country, after Greece, Ireland and Portugal, to get bailout funds in the growing crisis gripping the Euro.

Unemployment is high and services are being cut to reduce debt and bring budgets into balance.  Some economists doubt this is possible within the context of a single currency shared with Germany and France. There have been violent but futile street demonstrations.

Read more: Spain and Portugal

Fiction, Recollections & News

Love in the time of Coronavirus

 

 

 

 

Gabriel García Márquez's novel Love in the Time of Cholera lies abandoned on my bookshelf.  I lost patience with his mysticism - or maybe it was One Hundred Years of Solitude that drove me bananas?  Yet like Albert Camus' The Plague it's a title that seems fit for the times.  In some ways writing anything just now feels like a similar undertaking.

My next travel diary on this website was to have been about the wonders of Cruising - expanding on my photo diary of our recent trip to Papua New Guinea.

 


Cruising to PNG - click on the image to see more

 

Somehow that project now seems a little like advocating passing time with that entertaining game: Russian Roulette. A trip on Corona Cruise Lines perhaps?

In the meantime I've been drawn into several Facebook discussions about the 1918-20 Spanish Influenza pandemic.

After a little consideration I've concluded that it's a bad time to be a National or State leader as they will soon be forced to make the unenviable choice between the Scylla and Charybdis that I end this essay with.

On a brighter note, I've discovered that the economy can be expected to bounce back invigorated. We have all heard of the Roaring Twenties

So the cruise industry, can take heart, because the most remarkable thing about Spanish Influenza pandemic was just how quickly people got over it after it passed.

Read more: Love in the time of Coronavirus

Opinions and Philosophy

Gaia - Climate Speculations

 

 

 

 

Our recent trip to Central Australia involved a long walk around a rock and some even longer contemplative drives.

I found myself wondering if there is more or less 'life' out here than there is in the more obviously verdant countryside to the north south east or west. For example: might microbes be more abundant here?  The flies are certainly doing well. Yet probably not.

This led me to recall James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis that gave we readers of New Scientist something to think about back in 1975, long before climate change was a matter of general public concern.

 

Read more: Gaia - Climate Speculations

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