Trams

The Nice tramway project has been a massive disruption to the centre of Nice for a couple of years. However, the trams are at last running -though its only for practice at the moment.

The tramway is supposed to be officially starting in about 6 weeks time so I hope the finishing touches can be done on schedule.

Seeing the new gleaming trams gliding on the rails is quite exciting -at the moment people stand and watch as the trams go by. I suppose there was probably a similar reaction when the the previous tramway was built at the end of the 19th century.

Unfortunately , this old tramway stopped around 1950 due to the expanding bus network - I suppose Nice has now gone full circle in terms of public transport.


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Photo Friday - comfort

Last week was very stormy and the wheel of the seasons has definitely turned to autumn. The leaves are turning yellow and brown and soon they will be whisked away by the winds.

There is a chilly dampness in the early morning or evening air, even though the middle of the day can still be warm and sunny.

I think that thick, dark, hot chocolate is the perfect comfort drink when the wind is howling and the rain crashing down.


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Dragonflies

Dragonflies have very ancient origins and fossils have been found of dragonflies which are up to 300million years old-long before the dinosaurs appeared on the earth.
The ancient dragonflies were huge, with wingspans of up to 30 inches [75cm]

The dragonflies in these photos are very small by comparison - the wingspan is only about 2inches [around 6cm]

They are darter dragonflies [meadowhawks in the US] -Sympetrum species but I'm not sure exactly what kind they are.


Close up , dragonflies look very mechanical with the intricate arrangements of wings and giant eyes.

The wings can look like leaded glass if the sun catches them at the right angle. The dragonfly motif was common in Art Nouveau especially in jewelery and stained glass work.

This is a close view of the legs, showing the bristles and hooked, grasping feet. When dragonflies are hunting, they use the hooks and bristled legs as a trap to snare flying insects.
They can catch insects as large as butterflies and they are beneficial to humans because they eat a lot of harmful insects.

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PhotoFriday - Fantasy

A few weeks ago we went to the Cagnes sur mer Mediaeval fair.
In this case, the street performers were definitely more Mordor than Mediaeval.

I'm not sure if they were definitely meant to be Orcs as I couldn't find the company name on the programme-but they looked authentic enough for the audience.

This orc was demonstrating his prowess with his strange curvy blades.

The costuming and choreography was really good-although it must have been very tiring to wear all the layers of prosthetic makeup, costumes and amour on such a hot day.

One of the Orcs put his hand on my shoulder when i was busy talking to my kids and looking in the wrong direction - I nearly leapt of of my skin when I turned to see his creepy Orc face close to my ear.

It happened too fast for my husband to photograph , though I think the look on my face would have been priceless.
They were good fun and stayed in character; wandering through the streets staging axe fights, fire eating and acrobatics.

The photo below was taken during the axe fighting. I liked the firey shields and the axes landed with impressive thumps.

One thing that always amazes me at event like this, is how often parents in the audience seem to have no appreciation of danger.
It seems to escape them that the fighters are using real axes and fire etc so allowing toddlers to wander towards the actors or lifting them up to see the action better and into the path of an axe could result in a trip to hospital or worse.




Technorati Tags: photo friday, mediaeval, cagnes sur mer, orc

Photo Friday - Old

Blogger has been playing up, so a post I'd been working on for a couple of days has disappeared into the aether and I've been having trouble posting images which is annoying.

The Photo Friday topic this week is 'Old.' I have a lot of photographs that could fit the topic as I've been traveling around visiting a lot of mediaeval and Roman era places recently, but I decided that the mascot from an old Rolls Royce car would fit nicely.

The Rolls Royce mascot is called the 'Spirit of Ecstasy' It has a variety of nicknames including the Angel, Silver Lady, Flying Lady and even 'Nellie in her Nightie' after Eleanor Velasco Thornton who posed for the sculpture.

I'd originally been under the impression that the mascot was based on the dancer Isadora Duncan. Isadora Duncan died in Nice on the Promenade des Anglais outside the Negresco Hotel when her voluminous scarf became tangled in the wheels of a sports car, so I suppose I thought this was a weird irony.
The Spirit of Ecstasy sculptures have been supplied with Rolls Royce cars since 1911. They aren't made of silver [they were silver plated in the early versions] and apparently each piece is unique due to the casting method used.

The Rolls Royce was parked outside a church, its bonnet decorated with flowers for a wedding. The orange and peach colored lilies are just visible behind the mascot




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Photo Friday- oddity

We went to the Mediaeval fair in the mediaeval village of Haut de Cagnes last week.
Some of the street performer groups were wild and wonderful and definitely qualified as oddities.

This particular group of stilt walkers and musicians is called Bugel Noz.

A Bugel Noz is a Breton imp or sprite who steals a family's galettes [buckwheat pancakes] and their lait ribot [a fermented milk drink similar to keffir]

According to their publicity, the group is mean to represent spirits of earth, air, fire and water.
The costumes were amazing and quite believable -some children were freaked by the strange;y dressed people and others convinced they were real.
They certainly had an impish sense of fun and they used sort of buzzy kazoo things to make their voices squeak-not unlike Mr Punch's swazzle from a punch and judy show.

Technorati Tags: photo friday, stilt walkers, bugel noz,

Insects

The Scarce Swallowtail Iphiclides podalirius is also known as the Sail Swallowtail because of its large sail-like wings.
Its not a particularly scare butterfly here in the south of France.
A close-up of the tails showing the orange spots and blue details -this particular butterfly has lost the tip of its tail - either in a collision with a branch or in a near-miss with a predator.
This is Dolycoris baccarum the Hairy Shield Bug [aka Sloe Bug] Punaise des Baies [translation - berry bug]
The colours are a close match for the buddleia stem it is sitting on, so it is well camouflaged.

These bugs eat sap from plant stems or berries. Berries , such as raspberries, can be tainted by a fluid produced by these bugs although they are not a major problem for gardeners.


This is the Striped shield bug Graphosoma lineatum [italicum]
The French name is Pentatome rayé which also means striped bug
It looks like a Grammar school boy wearing a striped blazer -all it needs is a straw boater hat

The same bug is spotted rather than striped underneath.

There are quite a few burnet moths found in this area of France - the commonest being the 6-spot burnet moth Zygaena filipendulae.
Its difficult to be sure which type of burnet moth this is because the wing spots are so indistinct .

I've spent a lot of time looking at books and websites trying to identify the moth but haven't been able to decide definitely one way or another.

Burnet moths fly during the day and are dramatically coloured [Aposematic colouration] to deter predators.

The colour display warns that the moths are toxic due to a cyanide based poison created by the moths themselves rather than gathered from their food.

Burnet moths remind me of family holidays in Lytham St Annes and walking through the sand dunes towards the beach and sea. There were always loads of brunet moths feeding on the plants. In my mind's eye , I can see the vividly contrasting colours of glossy black and fiery red burnet moths flying past the yellow ragwort and sun bleached marram grass.

The dunes at Lytham St Annes are a site of special scientific interest and home to a diverse range of flora and fauna. However, they are under threat from commercial sand extraction, housing developments, and erosion from recreational vehicles.
The Defend the Dunes campaign is trying to preserve Lytham St Annes dunes.

photos, butterfly, moth, shield bug, scarce swallowtail, Iphiclides podalirius
burnet moth, sloe shield bug, hairy shield bug, striped shield bug, Dolycoris baccarum, Graphosoma lineatum

Photo Friday- wet

The weather has been incredibly hot here in the South of France so any chance to cool off is very welcome.
These are my husband's feet and one of my son's feet- the photo was taken while sitting having a picnic on the banks of La Levenza river by the village of La Brigue.


The natural marking on the rock made this look like a fraction sum to me -one smaller foot over two feet -but maybe that was just too much sun.

The Levenza is a tributary of the Roya river which flows down to the sea close to the border of France and Italy at Ventimiglia.

The Levenza river is much more impressive in the spring when it is swollen with melt water - but its clear and sparkling and most of all cool water to paddle in.

Technorati Tags:photo friday water levenza river

Photo Friday- Loud

It's the school summer holidays and we have been busy with day trips to nearby towns and villages.
We've visited the village La Brigue twice recently -the first time just to have a look around and the second time to go to the mediaeval fair that we'd seen advertised on the first visit.

These folk are the very loud drummers and trumpeters of Asti Medioevale , an Italian Flag throwing group performing at La Brigue mediaeval Fair.

All the groups taking part in the mediaeval fair went to a local retirement/nursing home to perform for the residents, which I though was really thoughtful,although I hope no one was trying to sleep.

Some of the thrown flags are just visible here above the first row of shuttered windows.

La Brigue is surrounded by beautiful mountainous scenery, visible beyond the mustard coloured building. La Brigue village, itself, is at an altitude of 812metres [2664 feet] and is on the edge of the Mercantour National Park.
Asti Medioevale in procession, walking back towards La Brigue village
Flag throwing dates back to the mediaeval guilds and wartime flag brearers. Its very impressive to watch the flags being thrown ,waved and caught

I don't know how they managed to keep walking , playing and flag throwing while wearing the velvet costumes on such a hot summer day.

A view of the unfurled square flags as the flag throwers walk in procession. The drummers and trumpeters kept playing all day.

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Spiders and a fly

I came across this crab spider [also known as a Flower spider] Misumena vatia. They are quite interesting creatures and often well camouflaged and easily missed. They move in a crab-like way which gives them the name 'crab spider'

Usually they are yellow or white [sometimes with red marks on the abdomen] and live on white or yellow flowers.
They don't spin webs, they lie in wait for their insect prey to visit their home flower.




They change colour by manufacturing a yellow pigment that migrates to the outer layers of the body.
If a yellow spider moves to a white flower, it will gradually lose its yellow pigment over about a week. A white spider moving to a yellow flower takes about 2 to 3 weeks to turn yellow.

This is an old spider cocoon egg- I'm not sure which type of spider made this. I saw it when i visited the nature park above Eze.
It looks a lot like a poppy seed case, except made of spider silk.


When it was first made, it would have contained an egg sac. The sac would have been filled with spider eggs and these would have hatched into hundreds of baby spiders.
The silk used for cocoons and eggs sacs is stiffer than the silk used for making webs.
This is the passageway that goes from the end of Cours Saleya in Vieux Nice towards Quai des Etats-Unis and the sea. I noticed a little fly made of mosaic tiles the other day, high up on the column supporting the roof.

I imagine this mosaic graffiti is by the same folk who have been putting up the space invader mosaics , but this time its a fly with mirror tile eyes. Not the best photo, I'm afraid but its high up and the light isn't brilliant there.
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Cimiez / Cemenelum

Cimiez was previously the Roman town of Cemenelum and was distinct from the ancient city of Nice, Nikaia Polis/ Nicaea.

Cimiez is now one of the posher suburbs in Nice but it still has extensive Roman remains: an immense bathhouse complex and an amphitheatre.

This photo has been stitched together in Photoshop from 15 photos to try and give an impression of the size of the place. The interior of the amphitheatre measures 45m by 34m and was designed to hold 5000 spectators. Apparently a wooden amphitheatre has been on the site originally but this only had room for 500.

The two entrances were for different classes of spectators- one side for ordinary soldiers and common people and the other for officers and wealthy folk.

The redd-ish building in the distance to the right of the flagpole is the Matisse Museum.

This is another multi-photo picture -only 4 photos though. Its a view over the archaeological site of Cimiez taken from the side of the Matisse museum.


The huge building is the remains of the Magistrate's bathhouse. The baths complex is the largest in Gaul and its an immense site.
The building must have been really impressive when first built- it's still amazing to see now with the layers of white stones and red tiles giving a striped appearance.

The Matisse museum [red building] is beside the Archaeological museum and Roman site
The baths were segregated into mens and womens - lots of carved bone hairpins and earrings were found when the drains of the women's baths were excavated.

The museum is worth visiting-it has a large collection of things found at the site, including altar stones and gravestones. The entry fee for the museum allows access to the park with the remains of the baths.
At the moment there are a lot of reproduction Roman games on exhibition , so my son and i spent ages playing the games. I don't know if the games will end up a permanent part of the museum -I hope so, it was good fun.

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Space invaders

When we moved to Nice last year, i noticed that there was a lot of interesting graffiti- stenciled pieces that I've previously blogged about here, stickers with different characters and some mosaic graffiti of space invaders..

I've been trying to take photos of the mosaic graffiti as I've come across it but there have been a few times that I've run out of battery power-and I've never managed to find some of the pieces again. I will just have to keep a look out.

I googled space invader graffiti and discovered that a French street artist called Invader started an art project of 'invading various cities round the world around the world, and i thought for a while that i'd found the artist responsible for the mosaic graffiti in Nice.
However, it turned out that the Nice or Saint Paul de Vence space invaders weren't on the list of cites that Invader had invaded.

The FAQ on Invader's site explains that there have been imitators and gives more info about the art project.So the mosaic graffiti artist in this area is still a mystery person or group.

This is the same space invader zoomed in to see more detail. It was maybe 15 feet up -so the artist would have needed a ladder to reach that part of the wall.
This space invader is either unfinished or was partially chipped off-at least all the other ones I've seen have rectangular backgrounds.
It's in Cours Saleya in the heart of Nice Old Town.

I took this photo and forgot which small street in Old Nice , I'd taken it. I'd been in a rush and just managed to take the photo before everyone else i was with disappeared into the distance.

The streets of old Nice are like a maze. I know the basic layout and can find my way around but there are quite a few streets that look similar and I haven't got the street names down pat yet.
This one was above a shop or cafe, so reasonably high up.
I spotted this space invader earlier this week when i visited Saint Paul de Vence. It's on a building across from the bus stop going back to Nice

I didn't see any other space invaders when i was wandering round, but then I only noticed this one just before i left. Maybe , I'll see some more next time.

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