I spent the last week with my band in Nice in France playing in an Irish pub, but since we only played late in the evenings, that left plenty of time for some mapping.
The general impression of the quality of mapping in Nice from my Irish (i.e. living and mapping in Ireland) perspective is that the basic mapping is very well done: buildings, house numbers (probably an import), building heights even (most probably a data import), bilingual street names, ebike locations, some street lights, some bins, most businesses. I can only speak for Vieux Nice (i.e. the Old Town) here, because that’s where we spent most of our time.
We used OSMAnd for navigating on foot to find the tram stops, pub, hotel etc which worked fairly well. It wasn’t always the most direct route, but it always got us there.
I used OSMAnd for mapping mostly, but it wasn’t ideal, because I didn’t qualify for the live updates in the short time I was there, so it was a bit tricky to remember what I had already mapped, as to not create duplicates. I had to use it in combination with EveryDoor which at least showed what I had mapped, even though I couldn’t use it to map more of these specific things, because there are no presets in EveryDoor. I also created gpx tracks to know which of the little streets I had already walked and where I had already mapped guard stones.
Urine deflectors
Before I went, my only mission was to find urine deflectors, because I had a hunch there would be some. I was right - I found 14. They are all recorded on OSM now, and also on Wikimedia in their own category and the image links added to OSM. The most unusual example was next to a church where a war memorial has been put on the wall that represents the urine deflector. I wonder if the people putting up the memorial didn’t know what they were putting it on. There could be more along the steps leading up to the Colline du Chateau, but I didn’t have the energy to climb that hill too often. It was about 33°C in the sun after all.
Here’s a YouTube short with the examples from Nice.
Guard stones
What I expressively didn’t mean to map where guard stones (wiki), because I thought that if I started, I would want to map them all. Guess what - I couldn’t resist. I found it fascinating how many there were, because they are a sign of carts being drawn into all these little streets that are mostly pedestrianized now. I ended up with 100 mapped, but I only photographed some of them (Wikimedia).
We also went to Antibes for a few hours, where I mapped 71 guard stones - and other things. It seemed to me that guard stones there must be protected under some heritage law, because some of them looked very new, so there must be a rule to replace damaged ones, even though they have not much practical use any longer.
I mapped useful things too, mind you. Quite a few waste bins (overpass), some showers along the beaches, EV charging points (overpass), street lights (overpass), bollards (overpass), bicycle parking, 18 plaques (overpass), 4 defibrillators (overpass) options for vegetarian and vegan diet in restaurants etc.
Mapillary in Vieux Nice wasn’t very well covered, presumably because it is mostly pedestrianized, but I got some coverage for that as well. It wasn’t actually very easy, because the GPS was off a lot in those little streets with the buildings being relatively tall (4-6 storeys).
Cimetiere du Chateau
The most exhausting “project” was probably the Cimetieres du Chateau (sorry for the lack of accents; it’s just too much hassle) which are Catholic, Protestant and Jewish cemeteries on top of the hill that used to house the castle. On my first visit of the site, I had noticed that most of the footpaths in the Catholic cemetery had names, so I had added notes for two of them. Back in the AirBnB, I added most of the footpaths for the Catholic cemetery (just because it is the largest part, and they were fairly clearly visible). Two days later, I decided foolishly, to make the climb again, taking a different route up, hoping to find urine deflectors on the way (which worked out). So at at least 33°C, there was I, leaving notes for every footpath name, taking pictures of graves and mapping water taps. I don’t think I’ve ever been this warm mapping. Some of the graves of more or less famous people had been already mapped, and I made a point of taking pictures of those to upload to Wikimedia and link them. They were people like Gaston Leroux who wrote Phantom of the Opera and Emil Jellinek, the guy behind the Mercedes car, for example. I didn’t know their names before, to be honest. The new Jewish cemetery has the grave of René Goscinny, inventor of Asterix & Obelix. The other famous people were more of local significance. Some graves in the Catholic cemetery had QR codes with further information, but I didn’t try them. The old Jewish cemetery had no discernible footpaths, so I only added the one leading to the steps into the new one, added the steps and the footpaths in the new Jewish cemetery.
(map link)
One of the most interesting things I discovered was a lavoire, a public laundry trough which was already mapped, but at least I had the chance to add the wikimedia_commons tag.
I know my way around Vieux Nice fairly well now, that’s for sure. If we’re going again next year, I might focus on the many rising bollards and more street lights. Boring, but needs to be done.