Nice

Two days in Nice, plus Èze, Monaco and Antibes by train

Give Nice itself two full days: Vieux Nice, the Cours Saleya market and Castle Hill on the first, the Promenade des Anglais and the Matisse and Chagall museums in Cimiez on the second. Three to five days add Villefranche, Èze, Monaco, Antibes or Cannes, and a week leaves time for Vence and Saint-Paul de Vence.

Trains and buses reach a string of coastal towns within the hour. Base yourself within walking distance of Nice-Ville station or tram line 1 and every outing starts at your door.

• First day: Vieux Nice in the morning while the Cours Saleya flower and produce market is running (it is closed on Mondays), the Baroque Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate, then the stairs or the lift up Castle Hill for the view over the Baie des Anges. The park shuts around sunset.
• Second day: walk part of the Promenade des Anglais, which runs for more than 5 km to the airport, then ride uphill to Cimiez for the Roman ruins and the Musée Matisse, stopping at the Musée Marc Chagall on the way back down.
• Three to five days: add sandy Villefranche-sur-Mer for a swim, the clifftop village of Èze, Monaco, and Antibes or Cannes to the west. Quieter Menton, near the Italian border, makes a gentler last day.
• A week: head inland to the hilltop towns of Vence and Saint-Paul de Vence, or ride the little Chemin de Fer de Provence up the Var valley.

May is the month to book furthest ahead. The Cannes Film Festival and the Monaco Grand Prix both fall then and push room prices up along the whole coast. The city's museums share a multi-day pass that pays off if you plan to see several of them, and the Matisse and Chagall collections deserve unhurried time.

Town driving is a mess of one-way streets with almost no free parking, so save any rental car for the hill villages inland.

Carnival in February, mild springs and the wet autumn on the Riviera

The best months for Nice are May, June and September, with afternoons of 21 to 25°C and little rain in late spring. July and August reach about 28°C with crowded beaches and peak room rates, the Carnival fills February, and October and November are the wettest months.

Winter made this a resort. English aristocrats began wintering here in the 18th century, and winter still brings sunny days between damp spells. Frost is unusual and snow rarer still; the last fall came in February 2018. The Carnival takes over two weeks of February, sometimes running into early March, with parades by day and night and flower battles on the Promenade des Anglais. It draws over a million visitors, so rooms go early.

April can still feel wintry, with more rain than nearby Marseille. By May and June the water is warming up. High summer is bone dry, and the pebbles disappear under towels.

September keeps the summer warmth without the August crowds, but autumn is also when the rain comes, often in heavy downpours. Keep the museums of Cimiez as a rainy-day plan. December is quiet and mild, and a good time to have the old town lanes to yourself.

Socca, pissaladière and pan bagnat, the Ligurian side of Nice

Nice cooks closer to Liguria than to Paris, with olive oil, anchovies, chard and chickpea flour. The dishes to try are socca, pissaladière, pan bagnat, a proper salade niçoise without potatoes or green beans, and the sweet chard pie called tourte de blettes. The Cours Saleya stalls supply picnics.

Nice belonged to Savoy and then to Piedmont-Sardinia until 1860. Start with socca: a thin chickpea pancake, lightly fried, sold hot in a paper wrap. Eat it at once on a bench by the sea. Pissaladière is an onion tart with olives and anchovies and no tomato or cheese. Pan bagnat is the beach lunch of choice: a round roll packed with tuna and egg plus olives and raw vegetables.

A real salade niçoise holds tomatoes, hard-boiled egg, tuna or anchovies and olives; potatoes and green beans are not part of the local recipe. Farcis niçois are vegetables stuffed with sausage meat and breadcrumbs seasoned with herbs. Barbajuans are fried pastries filled with chard and ricotta. The surprise is tourte de blettes: a sweet chard pie with raisins and nuts under a dusting of sugar. For ice cream, Fenocchio on Place Rossetti in the old town offers 94 flavours including lavender and thyme.

Assemble a picnic at the Cours Saleya stalls from olives, tapenade, cheese and bread. In restaurants, order wine by the pichet, a jug usually holding 50 cl, because bottles are marked up hard. The nearest vineyards (Château de Bellet and Château de Crémat) show visitors round by arrangement. One local scam to know: bottled water brought with a broken seal has often been refilled from the tap, so ask for the bottle to be opened at the table or simply request a carafe d'eau. Some street signs in the old town still show the Nissart dialect, though French is what everyone speaks.