NICE

The Promenade des Anglais is named for the people who paid for it. In the 1820s the English wintering in Nice funded a proper path along the Baie des Anges, and the name stuck for two centuries.

The beach is pebbles, not sand — smooth grey stones that clatter as the water pulls back, and which every visitor complains about exactly once before buying the right shoes. The bay curves so gently that from the middle you can see both ends, and the light off the water is flat and very blue.

The blue chairs are the city's own. The chaise bleue has stood on this promenade since the 1950s and has become as much an emblem of Nice as the bay itself. There is one on this towel, because a picture of the Promenade des Anglais without one would be a picture of somewhere else.