Travel Guides: All Countries / Europe / France / Provence-Alpes-Cote dAzur / Alpes-Maritimes / Nice
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| | | | Review by Gail Ugolik from Oxford
This was my 5th time to Nice and Monaco, so I'm sure you can tell I like the area. I have been there in April and July. April is my favorite, less crowded.
Review by visitor
Coming from the Washington DC area in the USA with what we thought was good public transportation pales to Nice. Nice really has public tranportation that works for the public. Extremely low bus fares ( 1 euro per trip or day pass). The buses go to all of the great locations inside of Nice and also to the great towns up and down the coast from Nice. The buses have their own lane in many of the streets in town.
This was not the best time for the US dollar vs the Euro, and Nice is already expensive. But we found some great little places to eat during our exploration of Old Nice.
The water is incredibly blue and the rocks were actually quite comfortable to lay on with a cushion. A visit to Old Nice does really provide quite the insight to how young the USA is when visiting a building that was built in the 1500s or visiting the Greek and Roman ruins of 5 & 4 BC.
We were in Nice for only 7 days and can return with still many areas to explore.
Review by visitor
Coming from the Washington DC area in the USA with what we thought was good public transportation pales to Nice. Nice really has public tranportation that works for the public. Extremely low bus fares ( 1 euro per trip or day pass). The buses go to all of the great locations inside of Nice and also to the great towns up and down the coast from Nice. The buses have their own lane in many of the streets in town.
This was not the best time for the US dollar vs the Euro, and Nice is already expensive. But we found some great little places to eat during our exploration of Old Nice.
The water is incredibly blue and the rocks were actually quite comfortable to lay on with a cushion. A visit to Old Nice does really provide quite the insight to how young the USA is when visiting a building that was built in the 1500s or visiting the Greek and Roman ruins of 5 & 4 BC.
We were in Nice for only 7 days and can return with still many areas to explore.
Review by Carolynn Johnson from St. Paul
a wonderful location both to visit itself (Old Nice, Chagall Museum, port, Matisse Museum, good variety of restaurants) and to use as a jump-off point for day trips into the hills or along the Mediterranean
Review by Shirley Casey from Adelaide,South Australia
Nice always sparkles and the sea is so beautiful there with many yachts and liners.
We particularly the old part of town where you can get a decent meal at a reasonable price.
When the tram system is fully working it will be great for getting around the city.
Review by Susan Tilden from Noonan Point
On returning to Nice for our second visit, I was not disappointed. We stayed in a unit on the Promenade de Anglais, perfect location and spent our time either sunning on the beach across the road, walking through the city, old and new, eating at numerous restaurants, or simply sitting, people watching. A wonderful relaxing time.
Rich man, poor man
By Frank Barrett and Giles Milton, The Mail on Sunday
F Scott Fitzgerald - author of The Great Gatsby - famously observed: 'The very rich are different from you and me.' 'Yeah, they've got more money,' Ernest Hemingway is said to have replied.
But do the rich have better holidays? We put it to the test. Giles Milton set out to do the South of France on a budget, while Frank Barrett took a trip where expense was no object. Who had the most fun?
They went their own ways but met at the end to compare notes at the famous Hotel du Cap on Cap d'Antibes: a hotel for the very, very rich (the Hotel du Cap is the only five-star hotel in the world that declines to accept anything so common as credit cards).
It was at this hotel that the modern concept of the sun and sand holiday was born. During the Twenties a clutch of Americans - including Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda - asked for the hotel to be kept open one summer (the Riviera was until then a place for the winter; no one wanted to be there in the heat of summer - after all, only labourers sported suntans).
That first summer, however, fashion goddess Coco Chanel joined the crowd and went back to Paris with a suntan: and the summer Mediterranean holiday was born.
LIVING THE HIGH LIFE WITH FRANK BARRETT
FLIGHT: Let the no-frills carriers take the bucket-and-spade brigade - we travellers of quality continue to enjoy the delicious perk of business class.
The price is immaterial (well, it's £778 return from Heathrow to Nice). At the airport we can avoid hoi polloi in the business-class lounge.
Best of all, we can stretch out our legs on the plane - and enjoy a sexier meal. If God meant us to turn right when we board planes, he wouldn't have given us American Express Platinum cards.
Further information: British Airways (http://www.ba.com tel: 0845 773 3377)
Travel guide: Nice
Putting on your winter Cote
The French Riviera swarms with life in the summer months but come October and it swaps its bathing suit for a less revealing approach to tourism.
Hundreds of people still promenade along the Cannes Croisette and around the Monte Carlo casino by day but along the coast things are cooling down.
As the temperature and tempo dip, those in the western Cote d'Azur might find the nightlife a touch chilly.
Staying in St Pons, eight kilometres from St Tropez and 86km from Nice airport, your car is a vital asset.
It's an hour and half drive from Nice to the Pierre & Vacances holiday village of Les Restanques along the toll motorway, or a bit longer if you take the scenic coastal route - worth it in the daylight hours.
High up in the hills, its biggest boast is its superb views over St Tropez bay.
Les Restanques in October is a tranquil place - on a sunny day you can lounge by the impressive outdoor pools. If you're feeling more energetic, archery, roller-blading, mountain-biking and tennis are on offer - for a charge.
The Tuscan-styled resort is leafy and open, and with decent-sized balconies you can forgive the rather less than capacious apartment rooms.
Tempting as it is for families to live ensconced in the well-equipped holiday village, it's worth venturing out to nearby towns St Tropez, Grimaud and Port Grimaud. The latter is a modest Venetian clone, with plenty of good restaurants and a few souvenir shops.
The sea is the biggest draw of the Cote d'Azur - it's crystal clear and swimmers are still tempted in late October. However, sitting in an open-air cafe in St Tropez, watching the awesome boats and yachts lolling in the harbour is close enough for most.
For a truly impressive view, drive up to the castle in Grimaud, which offers a panorama of jaw-dropping beauty and car parks of mind-numbing compactness.
Travel guide: Nice
Our glittering gift to France
From the Mail on Sunday
You can see why those English aristocrats all went to Nice in the 19th century. Flying low over Cap d'Antibes and the beaches at Juan-Les-Pins as you slide into Cote d'Azur Airport, you know immediately why they made the French Riviera their winter home from home.
Wouldn't you, if you could afford it?
After the greyness of a British winter, with its fog and smoky coal fires, it must have been so welcoming, so instantly cheering, to see the Riviera's magical light and its luminous sea, the forested evergreen hills and dazzling white and pink villas, lying like ornate fragments of angel cake between the palms and pines.
The journey there could be hard. Before the railway reached Nice in 1864 it took up to three weeks. You could travel by private coach, if you were rich enough, or share an apparently noxious-smelling public one, if you weren't. That went at just about walking pace.
Then there was the river steamer down the Saone and Rhone from Chalon to Avignon. And for the really intrepid there was the sea route via the Bay of Biscay and Gibraltar. The journey's end had to be worth it, and it was.
Though the rich Victorians may not have been exactly the world's first holidaymakers - the Roman gentry took to villas by the sea for the summer 2,000 years ago - in modern terms, at least, the 19th-century midwinter rush to the South of France probably marked the beginning of the overseas tourist industry as we know it.
It also helped make the Riviera, and particularly Nice, what it is today; a place with the vague semblance of a former British colony - which it never was in anything other than a garden party sense - a place in the sun which still bears an indelible, if faded, imprint of grand Victorian England.
Within five years of Victoria's first visit at the height of the Belle Epoque there were 20,000 posh Brits regularly wintering in Nice, building themselves baroque mansions along the bay and in the over-looking hills.
By the outbreak of the First World War, there were 150,000 'out-of-season' foreigners - Russian aristocrats and their retinues, German princes and theirs, and rich industrialists from everywhere.
Travel guide: Nice
Good value dining
Great place. We went in October and the temperature was 80F. The food varied from reasonable to expensive but was good value.
I would go again tomorrow.
Travel guide: Nice
More than just a film festival
We went to Cannes to see what it has to offer apart from the film festival - lots is the answer. I started to get excited on the road from Nice airport, which has some lovely coastal views.
Modern Cannes is a pleasant town with upmarket shopping on the Rue d'Antibes and a beautiful open-air flower market, plus a weekly antique market and art shows. At one end of the palm tree-lined promenade known as La Croisette, we watched a group of elderly gents playing boules or petanque - whatever it was, they were enjoying it.
After drooling over the big fancy hotels along the front, we climbed the cobbled streets to the old town, which has great views over the rooftops and the sea. Unexpectedly, the museum here has an unusual collection of musical instruments.
We took a boat ride to the Iles de Lerins and got off at the furthest island of St Honorat, visited the peaceful monastery and walked all round the island. Only one little restaurant near the landing stage, so don't wander off thinking you'll see what else you can find.
Travel guide: Nice
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| | | | Posh car, flash hotel
CAR: For that certain Riviera touch, nothing looks better than the Audi TT Quattro, with 225bhp throbbing beneath its elegant, Imola yellow bonnet.
Gutsy acceleration, beautifully styled interior, leather seats, Bose sound system. Just as well, because given the Cote d'Azur's awful traffic congestion, you may well be in the car all day.
Its stunning good looks have the desired effect: doormen leap to attention as you drive up, valet-parkers queue to grab your keys at swanky restaurants. People do judge you by the car you drive.
Further information: Two-day car hire through Holiday Autos costs £638 (http://www.holidayautos.com 0870 400 0010)
HOTEL: When it comes to hotels, as Conrad Hilton remarked, the three key factors are: 'Location, location, location.'
No hotel is better located than the Hotel Martinez, an outrageously handsome Art Deco palace right on Cannes' famous La Croisette promenade.
My spacious sixth-floor suite (a snip at £875 a night) had everything from a hi fi and a brace of TVs to exquisite Annick Goutal shampoos and shower gels in the huge marble bathroom.
Where to take the sun? On the balcony? Next to the famous Art Deco pool (kept at a temperature of 81 degrees throughout the year)?
Or relaxing on the largest private beach on the Croisette, where the hotel has its own bar and restaurant if you can't manage to stagger back a dozen yards across the road?
I hit the beach. Is that Claudia Schiffer dipping her toes in the Med? Guten Morgen, Claudia. Oh, yes, waiter, I'll have another small glass of champagne before lunch!
Further information: Hotel Martinez (http://www.hotel-martinez.com tel: 00 33 492 9873000).
Elegant Resorts (http://www.elegantrestorts.co.uk tel: 01244 897777) has a three-night package to the Martinez in a double room with breakfast, from £570 per person including flights to Nice with British Airways and transfers.
Take in pretty towns and petanque
Driving between the pretty towns of the Cote d'Azur stopping for snacks and cafe breaks makes a great week away.
However, that will quickly deplete your euros. Self-catering makes sense on the Cote d'Azur.
For example a reasonable fish dish in most restaurants costs around 30 euros (£19). Pizzas and pasta are the only moderately priced sit-down meals, at around 11 euros (£7) for a main course.
St Tropez may attract wealthy visitors but it lacks the real glitz of its casino neighbours Nice and Monte Carlo.
A glass of wine with dinner and a quiet drive home is a big night out if you visit out of season. With no public transport, any attempt to stay out late will earn you a punishing taxi fare home - if you can even find a taxi.
The rowdiest nightlife on offer is a game of twilight petanque.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the benefit of visiting St Tropez in the cooler winter months is equally its downfall.
A lack of crowds makes it easy to browse through the fantastic shops and you command the best seats in any of the wonderful cafes. It's just a bit too tranquil. I'm off to Cannes...
A week in a two-bed Les Restanques sea-view apartment costs from £666, with ferry crossing. Contact Perfect Places on 0870 366 7562.
Patrolling the Promenade
For my visit, one of my self-appointed tasks was to trace the outline of the British (mainly English, actually) imprint on Nice. So, naturally, I started on the Promenade des Anglais, the grand, six-lane, palm-fringed boulevard which stretches along the entire bay of Nice, from the airport in the west almost to the castle in the east.
Today the Promenade is the bustling rim of Nice towards which everything points, but it began life as an act of English philanthropy (although perhaps one made with a shrewd eye for development) in 1821.
After the failure of the olive and citrus crops, unemployed locals were offered work by British families building a road along the shore which would link their grand mansions and make it safe for any innocent young English lady - Miss Anglaise, as she was known - to promenade safe from muggers.
We've missed the greatest days of course: the Belle Epoque and years between the wars, when it was lined with dozens of grand, stuccoed mansions, before the post-war spivs got to work with their iron balls and redevelopment plans.
But even with its utilitarian, modern, balconied apartment blocks, the Promenade is still one of the great social crescents of the world, peopled always with legions of Rollerbladers, joggers and old-fashioned walkers on a wide, wide pavement overlooking the beach.
You get everything here: vendors selling sugared nuts and nougat, girls with bunches of coloured balloons, old ladies walking manicured dogs and circles of young people practising the latest fashion in martial arts, a non-violent, non-touch display competition of cartwheels.
At any time of the day or night the Promenade des Anglais is a celebration of recreation and display. It's also a fairer place these days, no longer a reservation for just the super-rich. It might not look as beautiful, but we can't always have it both ways.
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| | | | Eat well and shop
RESTAURANT: I jump in my Audi TT and head to St Tropez - 'Saint Trop', as we insiders know it ('trop' in French appropriately means 'over the top').
Nothing is more chic than St Trop's newest restaurant sensation, Spoon, at the fabulous Byblos Hotel.
If anybody had any quibbles with the Byblos - and you can hardly fault the brilliant rooms or its famous nightclub, Les Caves du Roy - it was that it lacked a signature restaurant.
No longer - last month saw the opening of its new Alain Ducasse eatery.
The restaurant reeks of class: subtle designer chic in the fixtures and fittings - the menu offers classic Mediterranean fare; breaded chicken, for example, or wonderful seared beef with Riviera garnish.
For dessert, opt for the gorgeous lemon tart. A meal for two with wine costs about £100.
Further information: Spoon Byblos, St Tropez (00 334 94 56 68 20).
SHOPPING: Within walking distance of La Croisette, smart shoppers have all the boutiques they need: Emporio Armani, Christian Dior, Escada, Dolce & Gabbana, Gianfranco Ferre, Yves St Laurent.
I need a new pair of jeans. Hugo Boss is just two minutes from the hotel. A smart pair of distressed denims are a snip at £85 - perhaps I'll take two pairs.
Further information: Cannes shopping guide can be found at http://www.cannesinfo.com
VERDICT: The British have been living it up on the Riviera for 200 years - don't let the side down by cheap-skating. Do it large for the most fun: Spend! Spend! Spend!
Discovering Matisse and Chagall
Nor did the developers quite claim everything. The Hotel Negresco with its painted glass dome, outside which Isadora Duncan was accidentally strangled in 1927 when her long scarf got caught in the wheel of her Bugatti, still remains, as does the Palais Massena, and the façade of the Art Deco Palais de la Mediterranee, along with relics-in-name of another time, hotels called Windsor and Westminster.
All those idle British and European aristocrats didn't live here in isolation, however, no matter how snooty they were towards the locals or how many English servants, teachers, plumbers (very important), civic engineers, and gardeners (who landscaped many beautiful gardens along the entire coast) they brought with them.
So from the Promenade des Anglais I found myself wandering into the old town - the small, triangular, terracotta-roofed place Nice was before the 19th-century tourists discovered it. And straight away, looking down its narrow alleys and salmon, ochre and yellow medieval buildings of artisans and shops, I felt I was in Italy.
Being in the old town of Nice is actually like being in a different city. The Cours Saleya - with its daily market of flowers, which are delivered all over France - is the centre, always busy with cafes and stalls and looked down upon by the baroque 18th-century Chapelle de la Misericorde.
Until the early Seventies the old town was a slum, but now it's the trendiest part of Nice, containing a real social mix. Restaurants and nightclubs are cheek by jowl with working men's bars, and all of it built on the side of a hill which leads up to what the locals call 'the Chateau'. On the far side of the Chateau gardens is the small Port Lympia, once the ancient Greek beginnings of the town, now a little Italianate gem.
Today's Nice is a modern city of museums and galleries built on a wealthy, artistic past. There is the Matisse Museum in a red-walled mansion where the Mediterranean light makes beauty of everything.
If that weren't enough, just down the road is the Chagall museum, with his floating mermaids and biblical evocations. Apparently jealous of Matisse all his life, Chagall must be fed up to see that Matisse got a bigger museum - though for me there was more fun in the Chagall.
I walked myself into exhaustion in the time I was there (which I'm sure is more than Queen Victoria ever did), only able to scrape the surface in a weekend (I didn't have time to see the Museum of Modern Art or the Monastery at Cimiez), and was surprised always to see such a wealthy and varied city behind that dazzling front.
And, to be honest, I could only come up with one complaint. I know Queen Victoria liked dogs, but what a pity she didn't think to bring a few thousand poop-scoops with her. Nice needs them.
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| | | | The poor man
THE POOR MAN'S RIVIERA WITH GILES MILTON
FLIGHT: The bargain traveller goes no-frills. I snag a £25 one-way fare with easyJet from Luton - to ensure the very cheapest price I book months ahead and choose a Wednesday departure.
I take my own frills - a sandwich, a bottle of orange juice, The Magic Flute on my Sony Discman and, appropriately perhaps, Down And Out In Paris And London - how George Orwell once slummed his way round France.
For further information visit http://www.easyjet.com (tel: 0870 600 0000).
CAR: It was not, I confess, the most glamorous car on the Riviera. My 1.6-litre, diesel-powered Renault Kangoo looked like a cross between the Popemobile and Postman Pat's van. But at just £90 for the weekend, it cost £548 less than Mr Barrett's rocket-fuelled beast.
It was practical, too - you can safely leave it anywhere (who'd break into a Kangoo?), and you'll rarely need to refill the tank.
And it may lack the Audi's thrust, but I predict that my humble Kangoo will become the style icon of the decade. In 10 years' time you'll see little else on the Riviera. Even Princess Stephanie of Monaco will be driving one.
Further information: Europcar http://www.europcar.com/ (tel: 00 33 493 214253).
HOTEL: While Frank was developing agoraphobia in his vast suite at the Martinez, I was warming to the cosy charm of my bargain-basement room at Formule 1, near Antibes.
This chain of budget hotels - there are more than 300 throughout France - emphasises value for money. And they don't disappoint.
My pristine-clean triple room cost a mere 27 euros (£16.20) a night. Frank could have spent more than 50 nights in a Formule 1 hotel for the price of his suite.
Although there was no minibar, CD player or trouser press, my room had all the basics: a sink, a TV and a double and single bed.
It's ideal for a cash-strapped couple with one or two young children. For an extra £2 you even get breakfast - a croissant, pain au chocolat, orange juice and a steaming mug of coffee.
The vending machine in the lobby offered a selection of other drinks. It was just four or five paces from my bedroom door - a great deal quicker than ordering room service at Frank's luxury pad.
France leads the world in budget hotels - they're on the outskirts of almost every town and city.
The only drawback is that most are intended as one-night stopovers and are close to motorways. Mine had a panoramic view of the six-lane A8.
Still, if you're out sightseeing all day and using them only to sleep, they're terrific value. Just don't expect to find heart-shaped chocolates under your pillow.
For further information visit http://www.hotelformule1.com.
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| | | | Budget eating and shopping
RESTAURANT: It's surprisingly easy to eat well along the Riviera on a tight budget. For a surefire good meal at rock-bottom prices, eat at Flunch.
These cheerful self-service eateries are often attached to hypermarkets - but they also have stand-alone city-centre locations.
I was a regular diner at the Flunch at the Sophia Antipolis Carrefour.
The food is excellent: lots of salads and starters as well as several main meal choices including roast chicken for £2.60 or a huge plate of spaghetti bolognese for £2.64, washed down by a half-bottle of Cotes du Rhone for £1.44 and stacks of scrumptious desserts.
Children can enjoy a complete meal for only £2.37. Who needs a Michelin star?
SHOPPING: Hugo Boss? Yves St Laurent? Chanel? Non, non, non! For clothes at laughably low prices, look no further than Carrefour. This stadium-sized hypermarket offers spectacular bargains.
I came in search of white jeans and could scarcely believe my eyes. Tex 'designer' jeans cost just 12 euros - £7.50 - on special promotion.
'Confort et qualite' read the label, which added (in almost faultless English): 'It's made in a variety of fabric of materials, and made for comfort and functional.'
They weren't wrong: my Tex jeans were a pleasure to wear: Mrs Milton thought I looked a million dollars.
I also bought a cheap leather belt and toyed with the idea of getting a jacket and pullover as well. The prices at Carrefour are so low they make Mr Byrite seem expensive.
The store sells everything under the sun. Wine from 70p a bottle. Pastis for less than £5. Need a TV? A sack of compost? A spanner? If you've got children, make this your first port of call.
You could do a weekly shop here - food, clothes, nappies and drink - and still have change to pay for another month's accommodation at Formule 1.
For further information: The Antibes Carrefour is close to the A8; leave motorway at Sophia Antipolis exit and follow signs (http://www.carrefour.fr).
VERDICT: Who wants to be a millionaire? I don't - with my Kangoo and my room at the Formule 1, it was a holiday rich in bargain-basement fun.
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| | Available rental properties in Nice |
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| |  | | Les Trois Epis
2-bedroom apartment for up to 7 in central Nice - Promenade des Anglais. Terrace with Mediterranean view. Minimum 3 nights stay. Available all year.
|  | | Lux. Apartment - Palais de la Méditerranée, Nice
Lge new luxury two bed apt., sleeps 6, air-con., two balconies. Centre of Nice - Promenade des Anglais, beside rests., bars, designer shops.
|  | | Les Palais des Fleurs
Luxury Bourgeois two-bedroomed, 4th Floor apartment in the Palais des Fleurs for rental in the heart of the Musicians Quarter, Nice
|  | | Apartment Hugo Park 102, Central Nice, France
Recently renovated 1 kingsize bedroom contempory apartment in a beautiful Beaugeon Building in central Nice, 400m to beach, 200m shops & restaurants
|  | | NEGRESCO HOTEL NICE
Negresco studio in famous NEGRESCO HOTEL, on Promonade de Anglais in the center of the Cote de Zur,with private beach in front,and Ski resorts 85km away.
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