Hi everyone,
my husband and i want to travel south of France. Some places we have been told to go is Nice, St Tropez, Monaco, Eze, Monte Carlo, Cannes. Could i get some suggestions of how my itinerary should look like or ANY suggestions are welcome! Thank you!!!
Its not a lot of area.. stay in one place and visit the others. From Nice you can take the train or local buses for 1-4 euros and visit places like Eze, Monte Carlo in Monaco, and Cannes , very easily !
We took a one euro bus to Monaco.. walked around Monte Carlo for a few hours.. took the one euro bus back to Nice.. but got off at Eze Sur Mer and had lunch on beach and a swim.. then hopped on bus.. total spent on transport that day.. three euros each! ..
To get to Eze you need to take train ( not Eze sur Mer) and think that was about 4 euros.
Cannes.. 3=4 euros ..
All these places are like 20-30 minutes away max.
Nice is a great base city, but beaches are rocky.. Cannes has sandier beaches but can be a bit pricier and its less central then Nice. ( look on a map)
I don't know if you can get to Eze (le-Village) by train.
Sorry kent is right.. while you can sort of get to Eze Village by train.. its not fair to say that .. and likely not even best.. as it would be train AND bus to get to village .. or a longish walk. I have read that there is a direct bus number 82 but not sure how long that is.. we did not bother to go up to Eze Village as planned,, because lunch and swimming was just way to fun in Eze sur Mer.
First, get Rick Steves Provence And The French Riviera. This has almost all the information you need, including very detailed logistics about getting from place to place. His general France book has much less information about this area.
You only need one base for a hotel, as you can see all of these places by bus or train from a single base. Nice is the most central with the most connections, but it's a city. If you prefer a smaller place, Rick likes Antibes (west of Nice) and Villefranche (east of Nice).
I will say that I disagreed with many of Rick's opinions about the various places. I liked Monaco and Cannes more than he did, and Villefranche less. And he barely mentioned Juan-les-Pins, which I liked. I also really liked Haut-des-Cagnes, where Renoir's house is. So, don't be afraid to see anything you're curious about, and form your own impressions.
Again, the book will explain the transit details, but along the coast (Cannes to Antibes to Nice to Monaco to Menton) trains run twice an hour until about 11 PM, and buses 3-4 times an hour until about 8 PM. The buses are dirt cheap to encourage people not to drive, and the trains are only a bit more but are twice as fast; both work well, although for Cannes I found the buses took forever and I much preferred the train.
Buses to inland destinations are less frequent, but certainly work. For instance, there are 8 buses from Nice to Eze Village on Sundays, and 16 on other days. A hard one to get to without a car is La Turbie, with only 4 buses a day from Nice and 6 a day from Monaco (and none at all on Sundays). The other hard one is St. Tropez - it's not near the others and has no train station, so you take a bus or boat. But you won't run out of places to see. In addition to the ones you listed, and the two I mentioned in the last paragraph, there's St. Paul de Vence (the Fondation Maeght is a very interesting art and sculpture museum), Grasse, Villa Ephrussi, Villa Kerylos, and more.
I agree with the suggestion of stay one place and visit the others. I stayed in Toulon and did day trips to different locations every day. One of the best places I went to was Les Calanques in Cassis, France.
