Marseilles to Nice

There are a few TGV trains per day that run direct from Aix-en-Provence TGV station to Nice Ville, at roughly 8:00, 12:15, 17:20, and 17:40. You can reach that station by a 10-minute bus ride. There are additional direct trains from Marseille St. Charles station, a 25-minute bus ride. Expect to pay about $45 per person for a train ticket on the spot.

Do you have a website for the train?

I'll look at the site. Thank you

Wonder if we are better off Renting a car. Cheaper and easier.

FYI, Rail Europe-World is not a site that can be used by residents of North America; you can use raileurope.com or capitainetrain.com or the French site voyages-sncf.com (but it's tricky). For train schedules in general, we recommend the DB link at How to Look Up Train Schedules and Routes Online. If you book a ticket ahead and miss the train, you'll be out that ticket price.

If you were planning to have a rental car for the trip, then picking it up there would be easy. But you really don't need a car to explore the coastal towns around Nice, which are all served by both bus and train. Does your hotel have parking?

We are staying at Le negresco and I'm pretty certain it has parking. I really didn't plan on a car because we plan on being in Nice for carnival and I knew we wouldn't need one. I just wasn't aware the train was so costly and more so a distance from the airport. That's the part I'm really Leary about is getting to the train station.

I'm thinking just deal with the cost and enjoy the train ride. Is it easy to get tickets for the train the day of?

Are you planning for a year from now? If you haven't yet booked the flight, you could book it to Nice airport and be within taxi or local bus distance.

It is easy to buy train tickets on the spot. While it would be possible for a "TGV" train to sell out, I wouldn't be very worried about that. Some of the departures from Marseille are "TER" trains which don't require seat assignments and therefore cannot sell out.

If you want to go from Marseille Provence airport to Nice right after landing, you can take a bus shuttle from the airport to the Aix-en-Provence station for the SNCF TGV service. That's probably easier than changing trains in the main Marseille station. Although TGV cars are on the route, the tracks are not ready for "grand vitesse" speeds and dink along like regional trains. As well, the navette shuttle shows up on the schedule as a connection even though it is by bus rather than rail. Look for yourself at http://en.voyages-sncf.com/en/ the official site for SNCF. It has become much easier to use thanks to an upgrade that eliminated a much-resented involuntary bump to Rail Europe for US patrons. Some Americans on this board and others have reported difficulty paying with US credit cards, possibly if the card doesn't carry the extra "verified" security number. Others favour www.capitainetrain.com/en
The Marseille airport site contains lots of useful stuff; here is a link to the access pages: http://www.marseille-airport.com/access-car-parks/access