Another weekend, another holiday. We have it pretty rough here in France! ;) It's been a while since we've done a trip within France, so we decided to check out the acclaimed "French Riviera". We had heard mixed reviews, so we weren't entirely sure what to expect, but all in all it was a wonderfully relaxing weekend!
A Thursday 4:30am wake-up call meant that we landed in Nice at 8am, ready for a full day of fun. Nice greeted us with sun and warmth, a welcome change-up from the rain and cooler temps we have been having in Paris (our amazing winter is now making us pay!). We walked the boardwalk along the beach before wandering into the old city. We immediately fell in love with the people and lifestyle here...so completely different than in Paris. First off, everyone is running, and I mean everyone. If you've been to Paris, you know why this is shocking. Secondly, everyone seems so relaxed and generally nice!
After wandering the market, which contained some of the most beautiful and cheapest flowers I've ever seen (apparently this region used to supply all of France's flower markets!), we walked through the old town. Doesn't seem much like France, huh? Nope, we felt like we were in Italy wandering these streets. That's because this region only became part of France 150 years ago, and was originally Italian.
For lunch we bought some street food, including socca, the local version of the crepe (with chickpea) and finished off with some gelato (the perks of Italian influence!) on the beach.
Then we hopped on the bus to our home base for the weekend--Villefranche sur Mer, a little town just a little farther down the coast. We are so happy we chose this as our home base. It was much quieter and less touristy than Nice. (Although of course, there were still tourists.)
Thursday night, we started the nightly tradition of sitting along the port with a bottle of wine and discussing life before dinner. We ate at a fantastic French restaurant that night,
Les Garcons. The food was amazing, service great (again, super friendly people), and prices reasonable (at least compared to Paris and the rest of the French Riviera).
Friday we decided to take the bus up the little village of Eze. The village was incredibly cute and quaint, and while I was most excited about the views from the top, the clouds/mist prevented those views. But, we made the most of the morning by having a little picnic lunch overlooking the ocean before hiking down the hill to the sea village of Eze. And we got some pretty great views along the way, as the weather started clearing up.
From there, we hopped on the bus to Monaco, and as we arrived in traffic-filled Monaco we realized some sort of event was going on. Searching on our phones, we realized that it was some sort of Grand Prix. When we hopped off the bus, we found it, the races were starting in 30 minutes and it was free for the day! What are the odds! We happily entered the bleacher section near the Monte-Carlo casino and learned that this was the Monaco Grand Prix Historique, which runs the same course as the actual Grand Prix. The cars are from all different decades of racing, and many of them were actually winners back in the day, or the drivers were previous winners of the Grand Prix.
The races started out with cars from before the 1940s, and progressively got newer, ending with Formula 1 and 3 cars from the 1965-1978. I'm not much of a racing fan, but I have to say this was a pretty incredible experience and a lot of fun. I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants a taste of the Grand Prix without the hundred of euros price tag. Only Friday was free; Saturday and Sunday were about 25E to enter the stands we sat in, which I think would have been worth it!
After the races we were over, we made the long walk over to the Palace hill for some views over the harbor and city before heading back to Villefranche sur Mer for the night.
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| Our "sophisticated/wealthy Monaco" look. Obviously, we would fit in perfectly here! :) |
We were so exhausted from the day, we decided to order take out pizza and eat it on our hotel balcony with some wine. Perfect way to end the day!
Saturday was forecast to be a nice day, but it never seemed to turn into that. It was warm, but the sun never could quite make it out. We decided just to stay in our area and hike around the peninsula of Cap Ferrat, which seemed like a short morning walk. It definitely was longer than we anticipated--8mi (13km)--but it was worth it! The views were awesome, despite the clouds, and we walked right along the coast for most of it!
After failed attempts to buy a picnic lunch at grocery stores in 2 cities (oh, small town France your 3 hour lunch breaks), we ended up eating some pasta before crashing for the rest of the afternoon.
The evening followed much like the first one, some wine and a great restaurant,
La Caravelle. I had the most delicious goat cheese salad I've ever tried (and I've tried a lot!) and the deserts were to die for. I was a little put-off by the decor earlier in the week (think Pirates of the Caribbean), but the food and prices were excellent!
Really just a fantastic weekend. Sure it would have been great if the weather was sunnier so we could have gone to the beach, but it never rained and was always warm. Everyone always talks about how the French Riviera is so expensive, and it definitely can be, but we found it pretty easy to find ways to make it more affordable. Would we go back? Yes, probably....we love how nice the people are and that the food has the Italian influence. We also decided whoever said the southern French accent is impossible to understand is wrong. We found them much more easy to understand than Parisians (maybe because they talk louder in the South?), and more likely to stay in French even though they knew we weren't native speakers. This whole area reminded us a lot of the
Amalfi Coast--the Amalfi is probably a bit cheaper and a bit more picturesque, but they both are great. See
all of our trip pictures here.
**Tips: I would highly recommend staying in a smaller city, other than Nice. I think you get a whole different vibe. In Villefranche sur Mer: Les Garcons and La Caravelle are fantastic! Grand Prix Historique is amazing if you can make it work (it's always 2 weeks before the real Grand Prix).**
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