Hello!
We are planning to book a trip to Nice and Paris in May on 2020 and it happens to be that Thursday is Ascension Day in France and I was wondering if this will affect my trip to Nice? Should I leave Nice the day before?
Thank you in advance!
It means that people will take a four-day weekend. Therefore, train, plane, and highway traffic to Nice will be heavy, but traffic from Nice is unlikely to be affected. Traffic to Paris won’t be heavy until Sunday at the end of the weekend. Nonetheless, you should get your plane or train ticket as soon as it goes on sale.
I was on the Cote d’Azur over Ascension weekend this year, staying in Antibes. I can’t comment on transportation to Nice, as I had arrived from Paris the morning before (Wednesday), but I can say that the towns along the coast were all quite busy. Most shops and restaurants stayed open. Note that if you’ll still be in France the following weekend, you’ll encounter Pentecost weekend traffic (the holiday is on Monday); I was in a bad traffic jam leaving Aix-en-Provence that Saturday morning, and Avignon was absolutely dead until Tuesday (I assume everyone was at the beach since it was early in June).