Nice is bloody nice, but there is forever a dark side ...

We made it to Nice after a full day travel. Three trains and a bus through Pisa, Genoa and Monaco. We have the most delightful apartment just a spit from the Promenade des Anglaise. More to come over the next few days. If you're following the blog you might like to track back as I have been updating past posts. Talk a bit later but this is our view ...

Right at the end of our street is the Promenade des Anglais which is of course the site of the tragic terrorist attack in April this year. In fact, when you read of the attack you get to understand that so many lost their lives just on our corner, literally. The famous Negresco Hotel is a block to the right and the casino to the left; between which many of the 86 people died. Many of those being children. We walked the Promenade this evening which would have been similar to that fateful night; just families walking, people socialising, kids playing, runners, cyclists. Except it was Bastille Day and the Promenade was flooded with thousands of revellers.

What really brought the magnitude home is the public shrine the exists within and around a large rotunda further toward the old town. People are still, today, leaving flowers, pot plants, cards, posters, poems and soft toys. The toys, thousands of them, really remind you of the volume of children that were killed that night. 

At first I was taken aback with the toys around the rotunda; it has been a moving gesture by so many. Then, when you walk the stairs of the rotunda and witness the mountain of soft toys intermingled with photos of those who lost their lives, you are rather floored by the enormity of this act. I was compelled to write in the condolence book available and took a few minutes to reflect on what a horrid, despicable and purely evil atrocity this individual has caused. And it is all in the name of religion!!

But, as they say this should not and must not stop us from living our lives and just around the corner is this ...