Among many Parisians, Nice has a bad reputation. It’s boring, they say. A place for retirees. It’s the top vacation destination for the worst kinds of French tourists, like Les Bronzés. The English and American second-home buyers who live there don’t even try to speak French. The mafia runs the city. The locals are cliquish. Their style is tacky. Don’t go.

So of course I went. I left Paris on a cold and drizzly Sunday morning in March. As the train pulled out of the Gare de Lyon, the early morning sky was the exact color of slate, and so were the sooty buildings that surround the station. Five hours later, as the train approached Nice, my voiture, or train car, was sunnier than my apartment has been all year. Exiting the station, it hit me: warmth.

Bone-warming, winter-banishing sunshine — it was everywhere, bouncing off the sides of buildings, glimmering on the hubcaps of parked cars, peaking through palm fronds. It bathed everything in light, and I began to suspect that les Niçois know something les Parisiens don’t. Walking along la Promenade des Anglais, I passed rollerbladers, families on bicycles, joggers and, yes, retirees — hundreds of silver foxes sitting on benches, soaking up the sun and the views of the Mediterranean. Looking at them sitting there like contented cats, the phrase “the older the wiser” came to mind.

>more