Our weekend in the south of France may have been more about visiting Monaco, but the biggest surprise of our trip was just how much we enjoyed Nice.
For some reason, the French Riviera has never been high up on my list, and to be honest if it wasn’t for Monaco we probably still wouldn’t have got there. We’d heard mixed reviews about Nice, so we were pleasantly surprised when we turned up and loved the promenade, loved the coastal views, and even loved the Old Town; something I hadn’t even considered when I thought of Nice!
I was enjoying it before we even arrived – the views from the plane were astounding, and we came in to land by barely brushing over the top of the sea, soaking in the dazzling azure colours to match the sunshine overhead. It was, genuinely, one of the best landings I’ve done!
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Arriving in the morning meant we had virtually a full first day in the town. We rode the tram to the end of the line, rather than getting off by the Old Town, and started off in Port Lympia instead.
This was actually a great place to start. After admiring being disgusted by the lavish boats in the marina and contemplating whether we should try and make time to do a boat trip, we took the beautiful coastal walk around to the famous Promenade.
It’s only a 10-15 minute walk, which made for a perfect introduction while we still had our little backpacks and didn’t want to wander too far.
Once we reached the Prom, where the beach was predictably packed, we headed inland into the Old Town, which was much, much prettier than I had given it credit for. In fact, I hadn’t even realised there WAS an old town in Nice until I started researching our trip, and for some reason in my head I decided it wouldn’t match up to the usual European standards. Well, I was in for a surprise!
There was even a market on, which was perfect as it meant we could stock up on some breakfast bits to keep us going.
We loved wandering the streets, grabbing some watermelon and pineapple to hydrate ourselves on the way, and eventually found the square with Nice Cathedral, where we sat with some ice creams and took it all in.
What a lovely morning!
This square, Place Rossetti, is probably my favourite place in the Old Town too – it’s so pretty!
From there it was time to head to our hotel to check in. We stayed in Riquier, a 10 minute walk north of the Old Town, which was perfect as it was just far enough away from “the thick of it” while still being very accessible.
It also meant that to get back to the Old Town, we could take the main avenue down to Promenade des Arts, which involves a leisurely stroll through Parc Paillon. I’d read that there’s a Loch Ness Monster fountain here, but I couldn’t find it! In fact, I was enjoying the park so much that I almost forgot about it altogether so there’s a high chance I just missed it.
Eventually, we reached Place Massena, probably the main square of Nice with a formidable fountain surrounding a statue of Apollo.
We noticed that one of the flight paths is right behind the square, which made for some pretty cool photos! They don’t give a true perspective of just how massive the planes looked though.
I also timed one photo to include the little tourist train!
From there, we headed back to the waterfront, and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering slowly along the English Promenade towards the iconic Le Negresco hotel.
We turned back at Le Negresco, but it’s possible to walk the whole way along to the airport at the other end of the promenade – a friend of mine has done that before!
Despite the above photos looking miserable and grey, thankfully that was only in the one direction, and it was actually a beautiful day for a walk. We people-watched the whole way along which was great fun when there are things like this going on.
I think this was our first regret that weren’t spending longer there, as we hadn’t been planning any time on the beach. (It’s not the best beach anyway, really – I’m not a fan of rocky beaches.)
Instead, we crossed the road back into the Old Town to grab dinner. I wanted to try some ravioli, because believe it or not, there is some insistence that ravioli is Niçois. I mean Nice is very close to the Italian border, and in fact used to be part of Italy as part of its complex history, so it shouldn’t be that surprising that there’s plenty of Italian influence, but it was interesting that they stake claim to something so famously Italian!
I’d written down a couple of places to eat, but we ended up at one of the restaurants a block away from the beach; an absolute no-no, I thought. Wrong – we decided to go for Casa Leya as it has excellent reviews, and it did not disappoint!
Most of the following day was spent in Monaco, so let’s fast forward to the next afternoon, where I had one more thing on my list: St Nicolas Cathedral, an Orthodox church which is unusual to see in Western Europe. This is a little out of the way, and closer to the main train station, which is why we visited when we arrived back from Monaco. It’s actually still a fair walk, especially in the heat. The problem is, the nearest tram is right next to the train station anyway!
Anyway – it was definitely worth it, as I LOVE Russian cathedrals.
In all honesty, while it’s very pretty, it was quite a trek even from the train station. Getting back into town, the easiest way seemed to be to walk back to the train station and grab a tram. One thing to note with this is that you have to buy a card for the tram, on top of the ticket price, so it’s a lot for one journey, but we’d use it again for the airport tram.
On that note, I thought it was strange that we hadn’t got one at the airport in the first place. Instead, we got a disposable paper ticket. There are ways to get a cheaper tram (essentially, walking one stop down and getting on there instead), which is usually exactly what I’d aim for, but with such limited time and slightly less of a backpacker mindset now, we just went for the easy option.
Anyway, one bonus of exploring a new area was discovering some very pretty buildings which reminded me of the art nouveau buildings in Riga.
We’d found out after I’d posted on Facebook that we were in Nice, that some friends we haven’t seen for years were ALSO there! And so after Monaco, and before heading for our flight, we met some friends for some traditional Niçois food. We headed for Especialites Nicoises, somewhere we’d passed that looked very popular, particularly for their “socca”, or chickpea pancakes, and paired it with a few plates of French “tapas” to share. This ended up being the perfect way to end our lovely little weekend!
(As an aside, the restaurant has very mixed reviews on Google, but I noticed most of the bad reviews are either from 2+ years ago, or are things like “they wouldn’t take card for under 10€!!!!!!” or about service, which was absolutely fine for us. Sure, it’s probably a little touristy, but the food was good and cheap!)
In the end, we were really surprised by how much we enjoyed Nice – and our friends said the same! We all said we’d like to come back, and after I’d been highly recommended the nearby mountain village of Eze, I had been a bit gutted that we just couldn’t make it work in with Monaco, so in my mind I already had an excuse to come back.
But there’s not just Eze – the French Riviera has somehow passed me by altogether, with fancy celebrity hotspots like Saint Tropez and Cannes not appealing to me at all. Yet it’s so much more than that, and I found it was the smaller places that started jumping out at me. Another colleague said we needed to stop at Villefranche-sur-Mer on the train on the way back from Monaco, which looks like the perfect place to relax on a beach for a few hours without being overly resorty.
Antibes looks divine; Menton, on the other side of Monaco, looks beautiful. Further along, I’ve been seeing more and more recently about Provence. Essentially: I need to spend more time in France.
(Spoiler: I’m actually back in France in a couple of weeks! It’ll just be a quick weekend in Paris though, so not somewhere new for me – but I’m intrigued to see whether I love it or hate it this time?)
Read more French & southern Europe adventures:
⭐ A Photo Tour Of Colmar, France’s Fairytale Town
⭐ A Cheap Day Out To Monaco From Nice
⭐ Doors & Balconies Of Valletta, Malta’s Enchanting Capital
⭐ A Day In Beautiful Seville, Spain
⭐ Highlights Of Venice – On & Off The Beaten Path
Discover more from An Orcadian Abroad
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What a lovely surprise for you! Nice looks beautiful in your photos, I’m glad you had a lovely visit 🙂
Nice is very nice, indeed! I visited years ago as a teenager, and I remember taking a stroll along Promenade des Anglais before shuttling over to Èze (definitely worth visiting)! I passed through Nice more recently a few years ago, but it was en-route to Menton, and I didn’t stop in Nice to revisit; however, Menton is also gorgeous and worth going!! I hope you return to the south of France soon to check out the many beautiful little villages and towns, for a bit of that warm French Riviera charm!
Nice is charming. I loved walking down the promenade and the best view of town and its bay is from the Castle hill. Antibes and Menton are gorgeous. I had the fortune of visiting French riviera on multiple occasions a long time ago. Eze is cute too but St. Paul de Vance is more interesting. Cannes also has an old town, up the hill.
I’d heard less than nice things about Nice, too, so it’s nice to hear that Nice is nice!
My wife and I were in Nice a few months ago, loved it, especially the Old Town. Did you check out Colline du Chateau the park that overlooks the city? Very nice.