Frolicking in France: Travel Tips for Nice and the Côte d’Azur

Pretty much everyone has the Côte d’Azur (also known as the French Riviera) on their bucket list (and if you don’t, prepare to add it after reading this article!). The Côte d’Azur region stretches over 550 miles across the southern coast of France. While in a perfect world, you would be able to leisurely explore many of the towns across this area, most of us don’t have the free time or budget that this would entail. Therefore, given limited time, I highly recommend spending some time in Nice to get a perfect taste of the essence of the Côte d’Azur. Nice is the ultimate marriage between a cultural European journey and a picturesque beach vacation – when you visit Nice, you can experience all the Côte d’Azur has to offer.

This past September, I spent 4 days (3 nights) staying in Nice with family. I personally thought late September was a perfect time to visit; we had beautiful weather, but it wasn’t really suntanning season so we did not feel obligated to lay out on the beach. There is so much to see and do in Nice and the surrounding area, that I felt like it would be a crime to only lounge around and sunbathe!

Where to Stay:

We stayed in an Airbnb that was located right at the heart of Nice’s Old Town. I am thankful we stayed near Old Town, as we did most of our exploring and aimless wandering here.

I highly recommend this Airbnb for its location (easy walking distance to the beach, food, and shopping). Also, the building was clearly inhabited by many Nice residents, and when I would come and go I really felt like I was one of them. Lastly, I saw multiple people stopping to take photos of our ornate door while we were staying here, which made me feel a bit like French royalty.

What to Eat:

Upon arriving in Nice, there were some classic French foods I needed to get out of my system…

On our first morning after arriving in Nice, we were having trouble getting a table at one of the crowded cafes along the Cours Saleya (more about this later on). We ended up wandering towards the water and stopping at one of the beachfront cafes for a croissant. The breakfast croissant I had at Movida was probably the best one I had during my time in France (which encompassed the Côte d’Azur, Provence, and Paris! Who would have guessed?). As I understand it, Movida also makes great cocktails – for the best experience, get a seat on upper balcony overlooking the ocean. It’s unassuming, but don’t sleep on this spot.

My quest for French food stereotypes continued – I made us a dinner reservation for our first night in Nice at Le Frog. I didn’t eat any frogs, but I did eat escargot (snails aren’t my favorite thing, even when they’re covered in garlic and butter). Other than escargot, my dinner also encompasses a delicious chicken and mashed potatoes dish, accompanied by the perfect French white wine. Overall I found Le Frog to be cute, not very touristy, and very authentically French.

Note: it was harder to find restaurants serving “traditional French food” (at least, as we know it in America) than I would have that. Most of the recommended restaurants in Nice were Italian or Mediterranean.

Almost every Nice travel blog out there will recommend stopping by Castel Plage at least once. Located right on the beach, this spot is first and foremost an upscale Mediterranean restaurant. However, Castel also has beach chairs and sun loungers available for rent on the beach in front of the outdoor dining area. Since we visited in late September, I preferred to just sit at a table and order lunch. The interior design and atmosphere here were quite elevated. In terms of food, I had a lovely watermelon salad as well as a truffled focaccia appetizer. This spot is a little more expensive than most of the restaurants we visited in Nice, as you’re paying for the view.

What to see and do:

1. Shop the outdoor markets along the Cours Saleya

Cours Saleya is a bustling throughfare in Nice that’s best known for its open-air markets. Our Airbnb was located right next to the Cours Saleya, so we stopped by the market every morning to stroll among the stalls. The market has multiple sections, including stands selling flowers, spices, food, pottery, and really anything else you could dream of.

The market stalls are lined up in the street, and alongside the street on either side are various cafes and restaurants with outdoor seating meant for people watching. However, I would note that seating at these prime tables along the Cours Saleya was a hot commodity, and many of the restaurants would not seat our party “just for coffee” once 11am had rolled around. I think they prefer to reserve the prime tables for patrons who plan to order more than just an espresso.

Without a doubt, the Cours Saleya market was one of my favorite experiences from Nice and Côte d’Azur in general. There is something so classic about perusing the different stalls and having that abundance of fresh produce and foliage at your fingertips. I visited other towns famous for their outdoor markets while I was in southern France (check out my post on Aix-en-Provence), but I thought this one was especially charming.

2. Explore Vieille Ville (Nice’s Old Town)

Make sure to spend at least hour or two exploring the streets of Vieille Ville, also called Old Nice (Vieux Nice). This area house more beautiful buildings and picturesque alleyways than I knew what to do with. Wander into shops, grab an ice cream cone, and get lost here!

I don’t have any specific recommendations for this area. Personally, we stopped at a few of the smaller grocery stores for snacks (aka wine and cheese) and perused some of the shops for leather boots. I think that getting the right experience in Old Nice is not about hitting any one shop or store, but more just wandering and seeing what piques your interest.

3. Place Masséna

This is the central plaza in Nice, located centrally between the old town and the “new town” shopping areas of Nice. The plaza’s tiling and neoclassical building facades are fun and distinctive. This is a great place to people-watch or grab a croissant at an outdoor table.

I don’t think you need to spend too much time in Place Massena unless you’re interested in doing some real shopping (i.e. modern stores, rather than the Cours Saleya outdoor market). But I definitely recommend at least passing through – the plaza and the fountain certainly make an impression.

4. Hike Castle Hill (also known as Colline du Château)

We woke up early one morning for this “hike,” which was more of a Stairmaster exercise. It took us approximately 30 minutes to climb the stairs leading to the top of Castle Hill and its various overlook points. I highly recommend setting aside an hour or two for this excursion earlier in the day. We had a lovely morning stroll to the top of the hill and were back down at the bottom before 9am. However, I passed by the steps of Castle Hill several other times during my time in Nice and can attest that the pathway becomes decidedly more crowded later in the day.

5. Old Port of Nice (also known as Port Lympia)

We almost spent our entire time in Nice without discovering the marina area of Port Lympia! Nice’s port is on the other side of Castle Hill. Therefore, you can’t see the port from the Old Town, which is where our Airbnb was. However, I am so happy we found our way to it – the colorful buildings lining the marina are beautiful. We happened to be there around sunset and the golden hues added a magical overlay to the sight.

If you wander down the Promenade des Anglais heading east, you will circle around the area of land that juts out (Castle Hill) and come across Port Lympia on the other side.

I only passed through Port Lympia briefly (a quick stop as part of our journey to Villefranche-sur-Mer) so did not really spend any time exploring the waterfront restaurants…but they looked cute!

6. Take day trips to other Côte d’Azur towns

I took three day trips to other Côte d’Azur towns while I staying in Nice. Candidly, I did pack a lot in with all of these different places, especially as I was only in Nice for 4 days. However, the Côte d’Azur has a lot to offer in terms of beauty and culture and I wanted to experience as much of it as I could in the allotted time I had in the south of France. Using Nice as a home base, I took three half-day trips to Antibes, St-Paul-de-Vence, and Villefranche-sur-Mer, spending a couple of hours in each location. For more information on Côte d’Azur day trips you can take from Nice, check out this post.

There are various organized group tours you can take to other towns in the French Riviera (including the three I mentioned, as well as many others). Some of these organized trips were really attractive to me at the outset (for example, there are boats that take you from Nice to Saint-Tropez for the day and then back). Ultimately, I decided against these full-day excursions. There was more than enough to see in Nice and the nearby areas without venturing too far to the west. If you’re staying in Nice for longer, you should by all means explore the further-out areas of the Côte d’Azur.

In conclusion, Nice was pretty nice.

I loved the time I spent in Nice and in Côte d’Azur generally. Usually, after visiting a new place, I don’t plan to repeat the visit in the near term (there’s a lot to see out there!), but Côte d’Azur might be the exception. There are so many things I would still want to explore (restaurants, markets, neighboring towns). I think it would be great to spend two weeks or more here living amongst the locals and exploring more of the villages. Hopefully I can come back some day and do just that.

If you’ve been to Nice or are planning to go, I hope this was a helpful guide in what to expect!