Places/France

Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur

Nice

A real city on a famous bay. The promenade is the edge, not the whole.

Nice is large enough to be a city and vain enough to know the light is good. The old town is a dense grid of restaurants, some of them honest. The beach is stones. People swim anyway.

Use it as the base for the eastern Côte d’Azur rather than trying to sleep in a different perched village every night. The trains along the coast are slow and useful.

See

• The promenade at both ends of the day

  Morning for the swim and the market afterwards. Evening for the walk. Midday is a bright road.

• The old town, with a limit

  One church, one square, one lunch you chose. The lanes reward a wander and punish a checklist.

• The port and the hill

  Colline du Château is a park on a rock with the view the hotels charge for. Walk up in the cooler hour.

• A coastal train, one stop

  Villefranche or a short hop you return from before dinner. Do not collect Monaco, Èze and Cannes before supper.