So Christmas is over, and of course that means that I am seeing adverts for holidays all over the place! I haven’t even started thinking about where to go this year, but enjoyed reminiscing about a lovely holiday I enjoyed to Côte d’Azur the other year. We stayed in a lovely self-catering apartment in the centre of Nice Old Town, and I would highly recommend both the apartment and the destination!
Old Nice has a main square full of cute restaurants and bars as well as morning and night markets. The winding streets of the old town are an exciting assortment of tiny shops and boutiques selling clothes, jewellery, art, gifts, herbs and more. It is also within walking distance of the clear waters and pebbled beach of the coastline, the harbour and the luxury stores in the fountain-lined centre. If you like art or history there are various interesting museums and galleries in Nice and the surrounding area, and there will be something to suit most tastes. Whilst staying in Nice we also took a bus to Antibes with its huge harbour full of luxury yachts and the Picasso museum, and a boat trip across to St Tropez.
We stayed at this lovely and reasonably priced apartment right in the centre of the old town of Nice, which was the in the most amazing location just 5 minutes walk from the beach and actually on the edge of the main square! I would highly recommend this as a place to stay, as it was lovely and rustic inside, made a great base as it was so easy to get everywhere, and the owner was lovely to deal with too.
In general Côte d’Azur is not a cheap getaway, with restaurants and bars being particularly expensive, so I don’t advise eating out every night. We bought reasonably priced rotisserie chickens and steaks from the butchers round the corner from the apartment, and shopped at the morning market for new potatoes and salad items. Bottles of wine from the local shops were reasonable and decent and we also picked up takeaway pizzas a few nights from some of the little local pizza shops in the old town. Fenocchio’s ice cream stalls sell delicious ice cream and are also worth a visit (daily).
English Rose from Manchester's Blog 
We went on a cruise around the Med a couple of years ago and hated it. Our fellow passengers were ignorant, racist and generally disgusting. The ship itself was liveable, (the staff were wonderful) but the locations we visited were dull, grey and uninspiring. Of the 9 destinations we visited we only enjoyed about 3: It was hell on the ship and hell off it too.
Every single day we were on the edge of abandoning the dreadful holiday until we finally docked in Nice.
Nice Old Town is beautiful, perfect. It was exactly what we’d been hoping for the whole holiday. I fell in love with it as soon as I stepped into those winding streets and started ‘discovering’ tiny shops, cafes, galleries and churches. It was everything I hoped for when we booked the cruise. After leaving the Old Town we walked the full length of the beach and back again. We were only there for half a day but it salvaged our holiday.
I would love to go back to Nice for a long weekend: Just long enough to relax and recharge. It’s so quirky it doesn’t take long to soak up the atmosphere. The apartment you chose looks and sounds ideal. I’ll keep it in mind if we book anything in future.
Thanks for reminding me about such a lovely place!
Glad you share the love of Nice. It was my favourite holiday! The only downside to that area of France is the price of eating out, but as I mentioned there are ways to cope with that. I would advise anyone who goes to be based in the Old Town – it’s amazing! So much more atmospheric than the hotels on the promenade, and you can walk to all the other places anyway!