I think everyone has dreamed about going on holiday to this part of the French Riviera and to be honest after visiting, I can perfectly understand why.
When to visit: obviously the summer time. Nice is a place for holidays, to soak up the sun and enjoy the Mediterranean. We went at the beginning of July and it was busy but it was not crazily overwhelming yet.
General advice: I would not recommend families with young kids to follow this itinerary. Obviously there are many villas where families can have a great time, however, if your idea is to visit different towns and villages as we did, it can get a bit complicated. I do not recommend renting a car on this occasion as it is almost impossible to park anywhere. Also we heard horrible stories about the traffic during the summer in this area, therefore we went to everywhere by train.
Where to stay: I would for sure recommend to stay in Nice. The city is really nice, there are many restaurants and bars and it is close to the airport. I would recommend to stay in the city centre and if you are going to be travelling around the area, check that you are close enough to Nice- Ville station.
For a luxury stay, I would recommend "Boscolo Nice Hotel & Spa”. If you prefer a more economic option, I'd go for "Boutique Hotel Nice Côte d’azur”.
Day 1: Villefranche-sur-Mer
On your first day you can go to the cute town of Villefranche-sur-Mer, which is just 2 stops by train from Nice-Ville. The best thing is that they have one of the few sandy beaches in the area! Usually all the beaches around Nice are pebbles and not sand. The beach is small and narrow so the sooner you can get there the better.
Regarding the train there are a couple of things to note: in general the train only runs every 30 mins so check the times in advance. You can buy the tickets online or directly at the station. We found the train tickets quite cheap so that was great.
After spending the morning on the beach, I would recommend to have lunch at "La Praia”. Not only is the food nice but you also have super nice views overlooking the ocean. After lunch, we had a walk around the town, which is very picturesque.
That day (I am just mentioning this because I am not sure if this is normal or an exception) it took us more than one hour to get onto a train that could take us back to Nice! This was around 4pm. The problem was that the trains were coming so full from Monaco that we couldn't even get onto them! We had to wait until the 3rd train!
After a well deserved shower and little nap, we went out to explore Nice before dinner. I recommend to walk down Av. Jean Médecin and check out Basilique Notre-Dame de l’Assomption and Fontaine du Soleil. It is also very nice to walk on the seafront before sunset.
For dinner I would recommend to go to “Les Sens” that offers seasonally inspired seafood & regional meat dishes.
Day 2 : Monaco
The next day, we just took the same train again but we went all the way to Monaco. Couple of important things to note… Monaco is hilly… VERY HILLY. In my opinion it is not worth going down to the port area, it is much better to see the views from the top and basically avoid the pain of having to walk back up the hill! Given how hilly it is, you can use the buses that are very very useful, especially in the summer when is so hot. You can pay directly at the bus with your credit card, which is super convenient as well.
What is worth visiting in Monaco? You can start at the royal palace and visit all the narrow streets around. From there you will also have a very nice view of the 2 ports. If you ask, me Port of Fontvieille is much nicer. You can also visit Saint Nicholas Cathedral in this area.
We decided to have a fancy relaxing lunch at Horizon rooftop, which has great views of sea, a very chilled vibe and very nice food.
From here you can just walk to the Montecarlo casino to have a 007 moment and check the park across the street and the fancy shops. After that, it was time for us to get back to Nice.
Again before dinner, we went for a walk and a cocktail a Marché Aux Fleurs Cours Saleya. For dinner, I recommend “L’antica”, a very nice French steak restaurant.
Day 3 : Eze
Eze is one of the most beautiful villages I have ever been to, I really encourage you to make the effort to get there as unfortunately it's not at all easy. So just to be clear, Eze is on the top of a mountain, and the train station is at sea level and it is called "Eze Sur Mer". Therefore we decided to go by Uber and it was very easy and the best decision (more on this later).
The village is just beautiful! It reminded me of the little towns that we visited in Tuscany earlier this year. You just need to walk around and check all the cute shops and get lost around the narrow streets.
To come back to Nice, we decided to walk from Eze to Eze Sur Mer station to take the train there. So even though google says that the walk is 20 min, the walk was actually one hour. It is full of rocks and it is quite difficult therefore if you decide to come back this way, I would recommend to wear hiking boots. We saw also loads of people going up from the train station to the village and to be honest that looked like a horrible idea. Maybe if you are in super good shape and you are doing this in the winter it could be feasible but definitely a horrible idea when is more that 30 degrees in July. However, I must say that the views were stunning. After that as I said we took the train into Nice.
And after that we said bye to Nice…
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