Paris, Nice, Provence in 9 days - too much?

Yes, wayyy too much. Especially as the 9 days probably include the arrival and departure days. And Versailles, oh dear. Provence is huge; it takes 2 hours to drive from the from one side to the other (western side to eastern, or northern to southern) and town are spread all around the area, and then it takes another 2 hours to then get from the Provence area to Nice (by car, not sure about train). The only way I can imagine something like this is if you stayed in Paris for 4 days, then flew to the coast (Marseilles or Nice) and stayed in Nice OR Provence for 4 days, then flew out of Nice (but in my version of 8 days you could fly back to Paris and then on home. So Paris and the Cote d'azur, OR Paris and Provence.

I would consider keeping your plan to visit Nice for three nights, but I would add days to Paris. There are flights from Nice to Paris. The train doesn't really take any more time if you consider that you can travel from city center to city center. On our recent trip, we took the train from Nice to Paris. It sounds like your main flight to France is a round trip to/from Paris. It would be a good idea to be back in Paris for the night before your flight home.

Rick's Provence and the French Riviera book has information on Marseille, as well as much more information on the region in general than in his general France book.

You should be back in Paris the night before you flight out, unless you feel very lucky. Anything that goes wrong will mean missing your flight home, which gets complicated and expensive to fix.

The answer to your title question is "Yes - Paris and Nice and Provence is too much for 9 days." Remember that you lose at least a half day when changing locations. Also, two nights in a place is one full day, and so 3 nights is only two full days. The day you arrive is often a jet-lagged haze, and the day you leave is taken up with getting to the airport for your flight home. So, count how many actual nights you have, and realize you don't even have that many usable days.

For a first trip of this length, pick Paris and one other place. It's best if you can fly open-jaw - into Marseille or Nice and out of Paris, for instance. Even if this airfare "costs more" (and it may not), you save time and money not backtracking - very important on a short trip like this.

If you are looking at open jaw flights, note these are called "multi-city" or "multiple destinations" on booking sites. Also, you'll probably find it easier to fly into the non-Paris airport and out of Paris rather then the opposite, because the flights to other airports will involve connections, and so will leave early (possibly VERY early).

As others noted, it's very tight timing to hit three destinations without shortchanging one of them. Note it's also possible to travel the TGV back to Paris from Avignon, in about 3 hours (3:10 directly to the airport). It can be faster than trekking down to Marseilles and waiting for a flight. If you only hit Nice and the Cote d'Azur, then you can take the flights back and forth.

Ok we will do 4 nights in Paris, 3 in nice, back to Paris for a night and leave.