First time in France

Time of year? How many nights will you be able to spend at your second location? I'm guessing you'll have to return to Paris for the last night before your flight home (assuming you'll be heading back to the US or Canada).

Unfortunately, there is no TGV service to Nice. The trains on that rail line take over 5-1/2 hours each way. Nice is a worthwhile destination, and it's a fine transportation hub for the coastal and hill towns along the Riviera, but it seems to me the transportation from Paris would wipe out far too much of your time. You could fly, but by the time you dealt with the airports you'd still lose a lot of hours.

You can get to Rennes from Paris is less than two hours; the fastest trains take about 1-1/2 hours. From Rennes you'd have access to St.-Malo and other attractive Breton destinations (Vitre, Fougeres, Dinard, Dinan, etc. There are a few daily direct trains from Paris to Rennes with no change required.

To me Brittany is a summer destination; it tends to be cool and overcast even then. Some others will probably disagree on that point.

You might want to share what your interests are -- history, art, food, wine, mountains, seashore, big cities, rural areas? And what time of year you'll be making this trip. I wouldn't suggest Brittany in winter, but the Riviera would be fine. And the Riviera could be too hot in summer, when Brittany would be cooler. Also consider how you'll get around -- having a car would be helpful in Brittany, but not so much in the Riviera where there are lots of trains and buses.

If you choose Nice, see if you can fly "open jaw" into Paris and home from Nice (via Paris if necessary), to save the time and cost of backtracking. I doubt if this approach will work as well with Brittany, meaning you'll need time to get back to a Paris airport the day before your homeward flight.

If you want to do Nice then fly to Nice and home from Paris. It is too far for a side trip from Paris and if you do decide to do it from Paris, do it first, and finish in Paris to fly home. If you do a side trip at the end of your trip, you waste the second to last day getting back to Paris for the flight home. If you do the south, fly there on arrival and fly back and spend the last 7 nights in Paris.

Brittany will be continuous rain this time of year -- it is beautiful.

I'd be inclined in Winter to choose another city destination, Maybe fly into Amsterdam and spend 3 nights there and then take the train to Paris and fly home from there, or vice versa.

A closer city by train to visit is Lyon. and of course Alsace could be fun this time of year. So either Lyon or Strasbourg is a decent side trip from Paris -- but again if you are flying round trip to Paris then make this side trip first rather than at the end.

Hi:

My trip is planned for the first week of April 2024. I'm interested in Art, food, wine and history.

It might be too cold for the beach that time of year, so I'm wondering if, as a first timer, it would be 'better' to go to Nice for a few days or Brittany and Saint Malo.

Thanks for your comments.

I think it would definitely be too cold to go in the water without a wetsuit. The northern coast of Spain has weather rather similar to Brittany's, though I assume it's a bit warmer in Spain. On a June 2016 visit to northern Spain, I saw only a handful of people in the water, and they all wore wetsuits.

I spent the first half of May 2017 in Nice. The temperature was pleasant (lows down in the 50s F, highs mostly in the lower 60s), but there was more rain than I had expected. It may have been an anomaly, because the monthly rain statistics in Nice don't look too bad for that month, but there were two days with really heavy, persistent downpours (one lasting all day) and others with lighter rain. It was quite cloudy on many days even when there was no rain. Somehow, I think a lot of us consider the Riviera a popular winter destination, but I believe we're misinformed. Smaller tourist sites in that area often sharply cut back their opening hours at that time of year. So April is far from high season there.

You might want to explore the actual, day-by-day historical weather statistics available on the website timeanddate.com. The data goes back over ten years. If I have any doubt about a potential destination, I look at the most recent five years' data.

Nice weather -- April 2023

Dinard weather -- April 2023

I'm linking to data for Dinard since St-Malo is not available; Dinard's right across the mouth of the Rance River.

Use the pull-down box at the right, just above the graph, to change the month and year displayed. Use the Search box at the upper right to look up other locations.

My trip is planned for the first week of April 2024. I'm interested in Art, food, wine and history.

It's worth checking weather data as acraven suggested, but my guess is that Nice will be more agreeable than Brittany in April. Certainly the water will be warmer, though not enough for swimming. As for your interests, Nice will be a better choice for art, wine, and history. Both places will have great food opportunities -- like anywhere else in France, for that matter.

And Janet has good advice about flights if Nice is your choice.

I agree with Dick: early April is usually perfect for Nice, but early for Brittany (I go there about once a month and the weather typically only gets nice in May). I would pick Nice. I find St Malo to be a bit overrated anyway - a well-rebuilt old town in a dramatic seaside location, but often crowded and not that much to do in the end IMO.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I really like the idea of going to Amsterdam instead of either Nice or Brittany, as it's still going to be rather early in the year.

I would think Amsterdam might be rainy that time of year. I'd pick Nice.

April's definitely earlier than I'd want to head to the Benelux countries, but the Wikipedia entry for Amsterdam indicates it's the least-rainy month of the year, so it might be not so bad for folks who don't mind chilly temperatures. I imagine it's pretty damp, even when not raining, however.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam#Climate

Use the contents list in the left panel to navigate to Geography > Climate, then click on "[show]" right above the header for the Demographics section.

The south of France is fabulous for art lovers; including ( in Nice) the Chagall Museum, as well as a Modern Art Museum. Close by, in St. Paul de Vence, is Fondation Maeght, where artists like Picasso, lived and worked for a time. There are also a number of museums dedicated to individual artists, like the Renoir in Cagnes sur Mer, another Picasso in Antibes, and a Leger in Biot.

Nice also has the Matisse Museum, the Museum of Fine Art, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, a very good naive-art museum and an Asian Art museum I liked a lot. The last two are west of the city, probably not walking distance from each other, but the tram line to the airport should be helpful.

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We are just back from several weeks in France for Thanksgiving. We spent a long weekend in Dinan and LOVED it. A 1h27m smooth train ride from Paris to Rennes, then a rental car for the easy hour's drive to Dinan. It was the perfectly sized large town for us and was great for day trips (St. Malo, Mont St. Michel) It was a little drizzly, but that's France!

How will you be traveling, and do you need to get back to Paris for a return flight?

Brittany, Nice, and Amsterdam are worlds apart in terms of overall experience.

If Paris is your hub, train service to Alsace (food/wine/history) is very easy and fast. Train service to Brittany (history) is also relatively fast, albeit a bit more complex depending on your itinerary. The TGV to Avignon (history, food, wine) takes roughly 2.5 hours. From there it is a short ride to Arles (art, history) where, after you have seen Van Gogh's work in Paris, you can see where he painted it. You can train back to Paris or on to Marseille to catch a flight.

Others have mentioned the virtues of Nice, but I will add that the airport there is very convenient and can be used to connect to an international flight. That said, it's a bit of a journey by train from Paris. It's also a mid-sized city, so if you are looking for a different pace after Paris you may be best served by using it as a regional jumping off point.

Amsterdam is great too. Very walkable and photogenic, with enough to see to occupy a couple days. AMS is also an international hub, so an easy city to travel to and from.

You have a week in France and want to do 3 nights in Nice, Brittany and Saint Malo.

It takes way more than three days to see the South of France, I would plan to visit Normandy, Brittany or the Loire Valley instead.