Nice, France as a home base for a month

Do you plan to rent a car or will you be using public transportation?

There's a regional train line (that means the trains aren't fast) connecting the coastal towns, making it easy to reach those. Nice is the bus hub for the Riviera area, so you can easily (if not necessarily quickly) get to places like Eze, St-Paul-de-Vence and Vence.

If you want to extend your day-trip reach into Provence, I fear the travel time will become annoying really quickly.

I believe getting into Italy may take an annoying amount of time. I found one morning departure that would get you to Sanremo in 79 minutes, but 90 minutes is much more typical.

As is usually the case, your reach will be greater and you'll spend less time sitting on trains and buses if you divide your time between two or three bases.

I do like Nice, it's just that it's not like Paris or London--it doesn't have a month's worth of sights itself. So you need to think about what other places you want to see and verify that they're practical as day trips. If you start paying for a second hotel to facilitate longer side trips, you'll probably eliminate any financial advantage from booking a month-long stay in one place.

If you are going to rely on public transportation, it is the best option in the southeast. The buses and trains almost all originate from there. For Italy, you have a choice of the French TER or the Italian Thello trains. There is also the TGV lines that cut down on the stops, but don't go at high speed due to track limitations. There are also privately owned point to point buses (Flix) for longer distances to Aix and other places, that leave from the Airport area. You can also easily rent a car from downtown and drive into the countryside. This is what we do when we want to explore -- for example, the Barolo wine region during the harvest.

We spent two weeks on our most recent trip to Nice. We took many wonderful day trips and also explored Nice. Our favorite day trips were to Antibes by train and Cap Ferat by bus. We could have stayed even longer.

Yes Nice would be a fantastic city to spend a month in. You can live like a local, visit famous museums, gardens and such. There are charming medieval villages like Eze, beach resorts like Antibes, and you can take the train easily to Monaco and Ventimiglia! It would be a great choice!

Yes, Nice would be great and on a great trainline.