We are planning a trip to Cote d'Azur. Ultimate destination (to base) is Villefranche.

Originally we had thought we would fly to Paris from Boston, and train to Nice, then fly home from Nice.

Now wondering if we might fly to Marseille then train to Nice and train back and fly home from Nice.

Is Marseille, first off, worth seeing? Secondly, is it on the TGV line - i.e., can we get easily to Nice from there? What would be the timeframe from Marseille to Nice?

I love Paris, but we have been there already, and we are only planning a night on each end to rest up and see a little bit. I am afraid once we got to Paris, I would feel rushed, and I like seeing new places anyway.

Thoughts?

I didn't think much of Marseille but some people do like it. There is a train between Marseille and Nice. 2.5 hours.

Marseille to Nice is about 3 hrs. Check schedules for yourself
http://www.reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en

You will be going from Marseills St Charles to Nice Ville
Note dates are in dd/mm/yy format.

Is Marseille worth it??

How many days will you be in the Cote d'Azur? Will you have a car?

If you'll have a car, I can think of about 10-15 days worth of things to do & see before I would see Marseille. If you won't have a car, that number would drop to about 8-10 days, IMO.

Stu Dudley

Our plan - including travel days - is to spend 2 weeks.

We will not have a car. (Don't want one).

We want to do a 1 night "stop-over" on each end of the trip somewhere, as I have a problem with my legs swelling during flights, and the less time in the air the better. So any way we can break up the flights is helpful.

As I mentioned, our initial thought was to fly from Boston to Paris, spend a night, perhaps 2 (we have been before), and on the way home, spend 1 night before flying back to Boston just to break up the trip.

Should we stick with this rather than Marseille? Or would there be some better alternative?

Never mind - just checked flights - which I should have done first.

There are no direct flights Boston to Marseille, so we would have to stop in Paris anyway.

I think we will go back to our original plan of flying into Paris, staying over a few nights, then either train or fly to Nice from there, and fly back to Paris from Nice with one night stop-over.

If you take the TGV south, there are several interesting cities to stop/visit on the way from Paris to Nice - and back too.
Dijon
Lyon
Avignon
Aix en Provence

Perhaps choose 2 and spend a night on the way from & to Paris. All of these cities have direct (no train change) TGVs to/from CDG also (except CDG to Dijon).

Stu Dudley