France – Part 1- Southern France
We visited France this spring for the first time. Over the next couple of weeks, I will give you some of my best experiences during that trip. This week I will cover Southern France, then will cover Paris and finally will cover everything Disneyland Paris!!
So, let’s start with Southern France. We chose to stay in Nice, thinking it was the biggest city in the South of France, right on the Mediterranean and gave us easy access to some other places in Southern France to visit during our time there.
We had a wonderful room at the Le Meridien that had a balcony and overlooked the Mediterranean. We spent our first day exploring Nice with a local guide for half the day and visited churches and the highlight was probably the visit to Mont Alban, which was home to the Fort du Mont-Alban. It had an amazing panoramic view! We choose to climb the stairs instead of taking the elevator – which may or may not have been the best choice. But we made it just fine.
On our second day, we did a day long tour to Monaco. We had a great guide who was actually from Monaco and had access to all parts of Monaco – thanks to the Monaco license plate on her van. As we headed out of Nice, we made our first short stop in the town of Eze. Eze is a medieval village on the French Riviera. It is on a high cliff above the Mediterranean! It was home at one time to more than 2500 residents. Today there are still some people who live there, but a lot of the old “homes” have been taken over by hotels that and those homes have become hotel suites. There are many cute shops and cafes throughout as well. We were lucky enough to be there when it wasn’t busy, but our guide told us it can get very crowded with bus tours groups.
We then continued our journey to end up in and exploring Monaco, We started on the old castle hill and were there to see the Changing of the Guard at the palace (which my husband thinks is boring.) Monaco was being set-up for the annual Formula 1 race that takes place there and our guide gave us a minivan tour of the actual F1 circuit (since it was mostly setup). My husband liked this part the best – he even took some pictures. We did get to visit the famous Casino, but only the lobby since we were not “dressed” to enter the casino. Monaco is home to more millionaires per capita than anywhere else – and based on the cars, clothes and everything else – it was pretty obvious.
The most interesting moment for me was when we stopped at a scenic over in France on our drive and you could see Monaco below us and Italy off to the left. Essentially 3 countries in one view! Another interesting thing was that Monaco has no passport control…since you can only access it through France, it has no need to have independent border control.
Our final day in Nice took us first to a car show that was going on in one of the parks in Nice (of course that was probably Peter’s favorite part). Then we had a guide take us to Antibes and St. Paul de Vence. Antibes is located between Cannes and Nice and is a wonderful small seaside resort. I would honestly probably consider staying in Antibes when I go again! The beaches were also far less rocky than those in Nice! St. Paul de Vence was a true medieval walled village. It had a lot of great shops and has become a sort of artist colony. We even walked the wall around part of the village – only a mere 40 feet up from the ground – with no railings. It was a very lovely little village and since it was high in the mountains the weather was great.
Nice is an interesting place. Its proximity to Italy means that a lot of the food there had an Italian flair. Which made my hubby happy. The people were super friendly, and the city has a very chill feeling. It was a great place to start our first French adventure. I would definitely visit Southern France again with the opportunity to visit even more places and spend more time in Antibes!
