COVID and the Riviera

Strolling along the grand promenades and charming side-streets of Nice, you could be forgiven for thinking that the pandemic had melted away just like the clouds in the shimmering blue sky above. But just try going inside any public space – shop, restaurant, tram, hotel – and it’ll be back quicker than you can say “masque obligatoire“. In this post let’s take a moment to look at where France is with COVID right now and how it’s affecting the lives of residents and travellers.

And we’ll do it through the medium of photos and tidbits of information that have nothing to do with COVID whatsoever.

At 50 metres, the Tour St Francois has long stood proud as a symbol of the city below, which it affords fine views of. It was originally built as a clock tower for the adjacent Franciscan monastery before it was dissolved during the Revolution.

I don’t think there’s a bell in there anymore so I can’t tell you how it tolls, but we do know that the toll of COVID on France has been severe.  At time of writing a total of over seven million cases had been reported, and the final bell had been rung on the lives of 118,000 souls. France was one of the European nations that became the epicentre of the pandemic in March 2020 and its approach has usually been more forthright than in the UK (during the first lockdown for example, you needed a letter to be able to leave to your house).

Time to move on. I am happy to take requests and recommendations from readers and others while I’m travelling, and someone I know suggested I take a look at the small neighbouring resort of Villefranche-sur-mer to the east. So off I went and hopped on the 100 bus at the stop by the Vieux Port.

And promptly hopped off again when the driver told us waiting passengers we needed to go to some obscure stop “derriere l’eglise“, for some inexplicable reason. Eventually some minutes later another bus did indeed turn up at one of the two stops by the nearby church and we were on our way.

A delightful but busy haven contrasting with the all-out energy of pulsating Nice, steep-lying Villefranche-sur-mer was another of those old sleepy fishing communities that discovered tourism and went for it, in a sleepy fishing village way of course. But the pleasant mask (obligatoire, remember) of relaxed good-times hides another reality. The city of Villefranche has had a surprisingly rich military history down the centuries, and its deep harbour has allowed the French to invite the old Imperial Russian Navy and the US Sixth Fleet to set up shop here in the past.

Another aspect of this heritage came after the French and Turks sacked the city in 1543. Remember that this region didn’t belong to France at the time. It was the Duke of Savoy’s, and no-one else was having it. Once the invaders had gone the Duke strengthened the defences with some impressive fortifications which are very much still there.

Modern France’s citadel against COVID-19 is the passe sanitaire, the health pass, without which you cannot enter most bars, restaurants, or other indoor spaces. The idea of this phone app is you download or scan in the QR code detailing your (fully)-vaccinated status or your recent recovery from infection. Now that some design issues have been addressed I found it easy to use TousAntiCovid to scan in my own NHS England vaccination QR code (sitting on the screen of another device) and away I went – able to pull it out when any member of staff wanted to check my status. It has been controversial in France, a land wedded to the idea of individual liberty, and there have been demonstrations against it. From my standpoint, whenever I was asked to show it (virtually everywhere I went for food or a drink) I took it out and the scanning was instant. There are human rights issues around it, and personal choice questions, but it was great sitting in enclosed spaces knowing that the chance of COVID-19 floating around in there was much reduced.

The boats bob around in the harbour at Villefranche, and so do the COVID case numbers. Over the last two or three months the incidence of cases (number per 100000 people) has fallen to 50 in France as a whole. Around Nice it’s been a little higher, around 80, but in the UK we’re about 300. So Nice is doing well. Meanwhile let’s hope we in Britain are not hanging ourselves at the end of a long rope – of the sort they used to make for the sailing ships in that long yellow building to the left.

It was now time to leave Villefranche, having had an interesting couple of hours, and time to hop on the 100 bus again to return to Nice.

…and hop off at speed again when the driver closed the doors on me as I was getting on.

How else was I to know that that gesture he made as he drove in didn’t mean “go to the back doors”? The bus was crowded, but some people got off so I assumed there was space to get on. The driver had other ideas, he’d meant “wait for the next bus”. And also “I’ll slice you like salami if you try to get on!” Luckily the doors were soft.

Like the drivers of the no. 100 bus between Nice, Monaco and Menton, COVID-19 remains an unpredictable and implacable foe, quiet and manageable one moment, dangerous and out-of-control the next. But like the passengers of the no. 100 bus between Nice, Monaco and Menton, the people of Nice – and probably France – are getting on with it, going with the flow, enjoying the new normality while they wait for the next bus, destination The End Of This Thing. The Cote d’Azur throbs with life, the restaurants are full enough, laughter and fun ring out from the bistros and the bars, the beaches and the promenades, the sun is still out and after a good night tonight we know it will be up and about again tomorrow.

We just have to wait.