Nice

The Promenade des Anglais, the sweeping seafront walkway that's become shorthand for Nice itself, is named for the English aristocracy and expatriates who funded its construction in the 1820s, decades before the French Riviera became a broadly French tourist idea. Wealthy English winter visitors, drawn by the mild climate, were coming to Nice as an escape from British winters well before the railway made the coast accessible to everyone else — a history that still shows up in the grand belle époque hotels lining the water.

The beach itself surprises a lot of first-time visitors: it's pebble, not sand, for the full stretch of the city's coastline. Water shoes make a real difference, and it's worth adjusting expectations rather than treating it as a flaw — the water is clear and the setting, backed by hills and the old town's terracotta rooftops, does most of the work regardless.

Vieux Nice, the old town, is a dense grid of narrow pastel-colored streets behind the promenade, and Cours Saleya, its market street, runs a flower market and food market side by side most mornings. It's also where socca, a thin chickpea-flour pancake cooked in wood-fired ovens and a genuine Niçoise specialty rather than a tourist invention, is easiest to find done properly — look for the stand with a line of locals rather than the ones with menus translated into four languages out front.

Nice functions as the practical base for the wider Côte d'Azur. Monaco, the tiny principality known for its casino and Grand Prix, is about half an hour away by regional train and works easily as a half-day trip. Cannes, driven heavily by its film festival calendar the rest of the year, and Antibes, quieter and less famous, both sit within 25-40 minutes. Èze, a medieval village built into a cliffside between Nice and Monaco, adds a shorter, less crowded stop if the schedule allows a third destination in one day.

Castle Hill, despite the name, has no remaining castle — it was demolished centuries ago — but the hilltop park it left behind gives a free panoramic view over the entire bay and the old town's rooftops, and it's an easy walk or short elevator ride up from Old Town, making it one of the better low-effort, no-cost things to do in the city.