Has anybody recently walked from the nearby train station St Augustine in Nice to the airport? What's the walk like?
Any hints about the airport itself? I'll be flying out of there in a few weeks and am staying down the coast so I'll be on the train anyway. Rather than getting off at Nice and getting the special bus to the airport it looks pretty easy to walk from the other station. We will either have a couple of carryons or one small checked bag and a carryon. EasyJet.
The problem with walking to the Nice airport from anywhere that looks to be close by is that it is cut off by a divided highway - - 4 or 6 lanes - - with no pedestrian crossing spots. We recently stayed at the Ibis Hotel, which is very near, but had to use the hotel shuttle. Even the Campanile, which is spitting distance, needs the use of a shuttle for that reason. Unless that train station is on the same side as the airport, it would be foolish to risk life or limb trying to dodge speeding traffic in order to walk.
As to the airport, itself, there are better food options than I had hoped for and some good duty-free shopping for picking up last minute gifts.
Hi Nigel, [and Rosalyn (did we meet on the walking tour in Lyon?)]
My pleasant discovery, might even be more pleasant since you are a party >1,
is that if you ask your hotelier how much the taxi to the airport is,
and then have them call for a car service, you can get a reserved car
for the same price or less.
Variation on this would be to take train to the station you mention or similar,
and then get in a taxi for the final kilometer or two..
More specifically, I left from Nice airport on my last morning from a hotel in Juan les Pins,
and the concierge called the evening before to get a car service, who agreed
while I was standing there at the desk to a final price slightly less than an on-call taxi.
When I came to the desk in the morning, turned out I had an entire Mercedes minivan to myself,
at the bargain taxi price.
To contrast, the local train on that line from the Antibes peninsula is really local -- there are small
stations that don't make themselves noticed from the regional trains. I'm guessing the bus mentioned
in the RS Provence guide is even stoppier.
Too much info more: I descended from one of those very local trains in Antibes and got in a taxi,
told the driver my hotel, and he raised an eyebrow at me said 'do you mean the one in Juan les Pins
or the one in Cannes?' Turned out I should have stayed on the train for two more stations at least,
and the taxi from the Antibes train station to near-the-water in J-l-P was comparably priced to the reserved
minivan from J-l-P to the Nice airport!
thank you both
I can't say whether anybody here has tried the walk. Google Maps thinks you can do it, and the airport web site refers you to Google for that purpose: http://en.nice.aeroport.fr/Passengers/DIRECTIONS-PARKING/Getting-to-the-airport/Trains.
Google Maps walking routes just go by the street layout, they do not take any account of the availability of pedestrian crossings or bridges/subways. It's best not to trust them if there's a multi-lane highway involved.
