After a nice day at sea, we arrive bright and early at anchor in the bay of Villefranche.
It’s a beautiful day, low 60’s and sunny as we board the first tender ashore on our way to the train station and Nice. We’ve been here before, so we know the drill – head down the seaside promenade, up the stairs to the train station, fight with that stupid self service kiosk which totally defeats us, then head across the tracks (well, underneath them) to the ticket office to successfully buy our train tickets into Nice. Why we even tried the stupid kiosk, I’ll never know. I guess we thought this year it would be different? Who knows, but, with tickets in hand, we sit on the bench near the torturous machine, giving everyone directions on how to go across the tracks and buy their tickets the easy way! Some insist that they can figure the machine out, stand there for 10 minutes fighting it, then finally take our advice.
We hop on the train as it arrives, then hop off again 2 stops and 7 minutes later in Nice. Today is our museum day – so we strike off out of the train station heading first to the Matisse Museum, then backtracking to the Chagall museum. I picked up a map at the TI, just because I like to have paper back up, and off we amble toward Matisse – which is a little more than a 1 1/2 mile walk uphill through town. It’s a beautiful day, so we figure it will be good exercise for us. We start following TIM, his walking directions are usually spot on, but not today. Today he is trying to make us walk up an entry ramp to a busy multi-lane roadway. Hmmm… I have my paper map and we start trying to reconnoiter. We’re really close to Chagall, there are directional signs all over, and a helpful local leans out his car window and asks us if we are going to Chagall. We try to tell him Matisse, but he points us up this staircase with a sign pointing to Chagall.
We end up following the signs, because once at Chagall, we know we can get to the main road leading to Matisse. Problem solved with just a little detour! It’s a bit before 10 am (opening time) as we pass Chagall, but since our motto is to go to the furthest flung location first, we continue on up to Matisse. 25 minutes later, we walk into the park containing both the Matisse museum and the Archaeological museum.
Unfortunately, they have changed the Matisse opening hours to 11. Pooh. You can literally see where the time was just recently changed on the signs. And no where on the web did it ever mention a time change. Bummer. Ok, well, plan B. There is a small little cafe over across the park where we plop down for a nice hot cappuccino to waste the half an hour we now have to wait.
Finally, we walk over to the museum, following Rick Steve’s instructions that you enter the Mansion entrance, not the basement.
As we wait around the rear entrance (which was sign posted) with a bunch of other people, the guards open up the museum, but then lock the door. Weird. Finally, one of the guards points toward the basement entrance and says something in French (probably, look you dummies you are at the wrong entrance – but whatever he says – it gets the point across). Bad on Rick! He’s normally so up to speed on everything, this is the first time he’s done us wrong. Oh well, the whole lot of us troop back over to the basement entrance pay our entrance fee (which includes a variety of other museums, but we won’t have time for those) and walk through the temporary exhibition about Biskra, the Algerian town in which Matisse spent time.
Afterward, we move into the permanent exhibition in the old Genovese villa. It’s a lovely old mansion with some interesting displays of different Matisse works. We spend a good time walking through each of the rooms, examining his paintings, ceramics and other oddities of his long and illustrious career.
Once we explored the entire museum, we headed back out onto the street and down hill (thankfully) to the Chagall museum. It makes for a quick walk downhill – past stately old buildings with beautiful flowers draping stone walls.
We arrive at the museum in time to snag an outdoor table at the cute little garden cafe in front of the entrance. The walk between the two museums is through a completely residential area with nary a restaurant or cafe. We were hoping to grab lunch on the way between Matisse and Chagall – but the museum cafe is our only option. We’d normally eschew museum eating options as too touristy or pricey, but this was our only option today. And it turned out a surprisingly good option at that!
The garden is lovely and peaceful, and the cafe isn’t that busy. The owner (we think) comes out and gives us the menus on big boards, then explains she also has specials – including a quiche. For some reason though, she decides she has to explain quiche to us – telling us it’s “like a pie.” Oui, oui. We know, thanks!
At any rate, I end up with the quiche, which is excellent, huge and comes with a great salad. Ed settles on a ham and cheese baguette and we spend a lovely 45 minutes or so relaxing in the garden with our food.
Now that we are sated, we head into the museum to gaze upon Marc Chagall’s works. He’s prolific, just like Miro and Dali and Matisse – all of whom create works in many different mediums. Chagall paints more religious scenes than I realized, so walking through the museum is an eye opening experience. Another good hour spent here leaves us ready to find the train station and head back to Villefranche. We change our course a bit, venturing down into the outskirts of old town in hopes of finding a cafe to stop for a drink, but as we walk past more lovely buildings and cathedrales we decide to simply stop on the waterfront when we are back in Villefranche.
We just miss one train and have to wait 20 minutes for the next, which is fine, we have the time. Back in Villefranche we find a little cafe near the train station that isn’t as busy as those closer to the port and plop down for a relaxing wine and beer. Then its back to the tender and the ship as we set sail to Marseilles.
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