After our lovely but embarrassing day in Venice, we boarded a night train bound for Nice, France.

Nice (1) is a town obsessed with the body. Bikinis and expensive shoes are in every store, along with cellulite reduction crème and depilatories. Lots of porn shops. But the rooster shoes (2) were great. As were the flowers (3), roofs (4) (shouldn't it be rooves?), and the museum of contemporary art. The rotating exhibit of Arman, an artist fluent in furniture pyrotechnics and repetition of the bizarre, inspired me to continue with my international crime spree and take a couple of contraband (5) photos (6).

On a lark, we each bought L. 24,000 watches. Here's my punk bubble watch (7). Didn't even require a battery, just the occasional crank. It stopped working the next day.

A note on gelato: once you've had the real thing, you just can't go back to regular ice cream. We had lovely and bizarre combos like peach + chocolate + hazelnut and nutella + citron + violet. Later in Madrid, we tasted whisky gelato, and it was as bad as you'd expect.

Next: Oh, Barcelona . . .