Nice 2020, Part 1

First, let us say that French strikes stink.  One of the first words you learn upon visiting France is "greve", which means "strike".  It's almost as important as "bonjour".  At the beginning of this trip, the unions were all up at arms about pension reform in France and had been since November.  This translated into one or two strikes each week, consisting of complete shutdowns of the transport systems.  No tram, no bus, no train, no get anywhere.  Plenty of traffic jams, though.  This went on until the proposed law went to the assembly.  In American terms, the bill went to the house for debate.  At that point, mid-February, all the strikes stopped, supposedly until March 31.  Good.  We could use a break.

So, on a non-strike day, we went over to Monaco to see the circus animals.  This year was Monaco's year of the horse, and there were plenty of them.

We skipped Rally this year.  We don't get enough coverage either here or in the states to know who's who anymore.  Don't worry, F1's coming up.  And speaking of which, off to Barcelona we went to watch the annual testing, with excellent weather.  Formula 1 has shortened the number of testing days, so there was plenty of track action.

And somehow, the new management has persuaded the teams that hiding behind the blinds in the garages was no longer to their liking, so the garages were open and visible most of the time.  One could even see the occasional driver!  Big improvement for the fans.

Back to Nice and it was Carnaval time.  This year's theme was "King of Fashion".  Lots and lots of Karl Lagerfeld.

We were excited when one news source stated that the burning of the King was moving back to the sea, to be accompanied by fireworks, like it was before the tragedy of July 2016.  Other sources did not support that, and the official program said nothing about any of it.  We were wondering whether to walk down to the water on March 1 to see what, if anything, was going to happen.  Our fine Mayor Estrosi (I mean that literally.  No joking.  This guy is great.) made up our minds for us by cancelling the rest of the festivities due to the Coronavirus fears.  Guess he wanted to keep any infected Italians on their side of the border.  In the end, the king was burned at Place Massena in an unusual situation, because the grandstands had already been taken down.  So what do you do with all the flowers when you have cancelled not one, but two Bataille des Fleurs (flower parades)?  Some went to the war memorials, some to the cemeteries, some to the hospitals, and the rest to the people on the street:

The city employees were having a blast distributing the mimosas.  We hear that next year's theme is King of Animals.  Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my.