Socca and Roses at the Cours Saleya Morning Market

The Cours Saleya is Nice's great outdoor market — a long rectangular square in the old town, lined on one side by the former Royal Palace (now the prefecture), on the other by restaurants and the Mediterranean. Tuesday through Sunday, the square fills with flower vendors, fruit and vegetable stalls, cheese merchants from the pre-Alps, olive oil producers from the arriere-pays, and the women who make socca.

Socca is a chickpea flatbread — thin, slightly crisp at the edges, soft and nutty in the centre — cooked in enormous copper pans over wood fires and sold by the paper-wrapped slice. It is Nice's great street food, eaten standing up from a paper wrap with coarse black pepper and nothing else. The socca vendors at the Cours Saleya have been in the same spots for generations. The queue at eight in the morning tells you which one is best. Eat your socca, buy a rose for three euros from the flower stalls, drink the worst coffee you have ever had from the stand at the end, and consider that life is negotiable after all.

Nice's old town (Vieux-Nice) is an exuberant Italian-influenced labyrinth of ochre and terracotta buildings, narrow alleys with washing lines, and the baroque churches that the House of Savoy installed. The Promenade des Anglais stretches six kilometres along the bay — best walked at dawn before the cyclists arrive. The pebble beach is not comfortable for sunbathing but excellent for swimming. The Colline du Chateau park above the old town has the best view of the bay and the old rooftops.