Best Base for French Riviera
 

Looking into a 1 week trip next year (May, Sept or Oct) to celebrate 20 yr anniversary.

No need to lay out on the beach, as boaters, we out in the sun all summer. Need the best town for base and plan to utilize train system to travel to other coastal communities (i.e. Eze, Menton, Villefranche, etc.)Prefer apartment. We'd like to sightsee, window shop, drink wine, relax, perhpas a museum or two.

What would you recommed? Thanks.

Either Nice or Villefranche should work nicely; both have easy train access and a good variety of apartment rentals.

Thank you Underhill;

I've located a nice apartment in Nice, but I'm very interested in Villefranch (glad you'd mentioned this as well).

Do you have any suggestions. A nightly equivalent rate of 100 - 150 is the range I'd like to stay within.

Thank you.

Nice is a little more convenient for transportation than Villefranche, especially for buses.

Mimar,

That's good to know.Thanks.

I remember when we spent 4 days in Sorrento and thought that the next time we would go to the Amalfi coast, we'd stay in Positano.

Well, I'd just like to stay in the a comparable location relative to the size of the town and "coziness", without sacrificing too much on restaurant choices, for evening meals and transport options.

Nice is great for the train and the museums are wonderful and so is the food.

How does the size of Nice compare to Villefranche? Is is a similar comparison of say, Sorrento to Positano?

Thanks.

Nice is one of the two largest cities in the south of France, while Villefranche is more of a small town on the coast.

Hi, hope no one minds too much if I jump in since I have a similar trip planned for next April. Let me ask about Antibes, Cagnes-sur-mer or even Grasse as a home base. I will of course have a car. Thanks.

Grasse is a bit out of the way, and to be honest it's not somewhere I would want to stay. There's not much to do once you've seen the perfumeries and Provençal folk-art museum, and night time can, according to friends who live below the town, be a bit iffy these days.

Cagnes-sur-Mer is a holiday town that features mostly apartments. Not much in the way of window-shopping compared with, say, Vieux Nice, Cannes, or Antibes.

Antibes would be nice; it's a very attractive town with a good museum (the Picasso), an outdoor market, and lots of interesting little shops. As a base, however, there's a problem: getting out of the town can take a long time, as there's only one major road and the traffic can be fierce.

Unless you want to be near a beach you might consider Mougins, Valbonne, or the area around St-Paul-de-Vence. All are interesting villages with good hotels and restaurants and are not far from the coast.

I wouldn't choose Grasse for a base either, for the same reasons Underhill mentions. I don't know about the iffy nightlife, but there's nothing about it that I would choose for a base. It isn't very convenient.