Category
G
THE TRIP
Visited
Basis
Updated
The short answer
At a glance
Menton across the water, the last French town before Italy.
Four nights on the French Riviera, with one base, a coast of day trips and a driver for the hill villages.
Destination overview
The Riviera is a strip of coast you can run end to end in an hour, which is exactly why it works as a one-base trip. Nice is the best base, a proper city with an airport and a coastal railway, and Monaco, Antibes, Villefranche and the hill villages are all under an hour away. If you’d like it quieter, base yourself at Villefranche and Cap Ferrat, ten minutes by train from Nice. This route uses the coast from Nice to Menton, with one day inland.
Opening scene
It’s eight in the morning in Vieux Nice, before the terraces fill. The ochre walls are still in shadow, there’s washing hung across the lane, and the smell of socca is already drifting out of a doorway. A little later you’ll be on a boat off Villefranche with the water going from green to the deepest blue, and a few days after that you’ll be climbing the stepped lanes of Menton toward a Baroque church the colour of apricots. The Riviera of the postcards is real, but it belongs to the early hours, and this route is built around them.
The ask
The question I hear most is where to base yourself on the French Riviera, and whether you can do it without constantly changing hotels. You can: choose Nice or Villefranche, keep a driver for the hill villages and use the little coastal train for everything else. This route is that trip in four nights.
You’ve reached the quiet door.
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