Cassis is more what St Tropez was like until Bridget Bardot bought a home in St, Tro.
I disagree about Nice not being worthwhile. Visit the flower market and try the local specialty, SOCCA.
I can't tell you about train stations but if you can get to St-Paul-de-Vence, th Maeght Foundation, is a great art experience.

Go to Nice. Stay on the Promenade des Anglais near Vieux Nice, where you'll be close to both shopping and many good restaurants. The beach will be on the other side of the Promenade; it's worth paying for a hotel room with that view.

Back to your original post about the train...the real fast (TGV) train tracks end at Marseille or Aix-en-Provence. From there to Nice you go by regular rails, thus the 6+ hours. In recent years we've been going by air from Orly to save time.

Since wanderer1 isn't going until next year, I'm going to weigh in:

I live in the Italian Riviera, in a small coastal town, and there is a big difference between Nice and small coastal town on the Riviera, especially the many lanes of car traffic that separate the hotels of the promenade from the sea. It is certainly nothing like Positano. It is certainly more like Sorrento.

I don't know enough about the small towns in your target area to recommend one over the other. (Part of my problem is that I simply prefer the Italian Riviera to the French Riviera, and have never been as far as St Tropez.

Since you are taking a 2-week trip, maye you should consider spending 3 nights in Nice, just to visit St Tropez and Cap d'Antibes. Then move in the direction of Italy for the rest of your touristing. You can always go back to Nice if you liked it. It's really not far. You might even go as far as Menton and still have simple day trips to your other sights by train.

I don't think you need be in a rush to book -- and even if you do, you can cancel.

thanks - lot of good info -
planning on going to Nice
late Sept, early Oct 08.

Bookmarking.

The fantastic thing about the Riviera is that everywhere is so easy to get to and one place can be completely different from the rest..ad infinitum.

It doesn't matter where you stay if you hire a car, otherwise ANYWHERE on the coast except St Tropez is only a few minutes away on the train or the Bus (€1 to go anywhere!). The contrast between Nice as a busy albeit charming city and say Peillon, an 11th century preserved village on a rock only 15 mins out of town, could not be more stark.

It's all here, come and explore. Here's a link to my favourite guides for the area.

http://www.rivierarentalguide.com/explore_riviera/

Thanks everyone for your help.

I think we are leaning toward either Antibes or Villefranche. We really don't want to stay in a city, even though I realize Nice is made up of little neighborhoods - it still is a city.

If anyone can help us with personal experience with either place, would appreciate it - shops, restaurants, walking, trains, buses - pros and cons.

We don't want to be somewhere where at night there is nothing to do (no cafes, no restaurants), but don't need alot to keep us happy. If we could walk to a restaurant at night, have a casual meal and a glass of wine, walk down by the water, that's all we are looking for. We're not "nighlife" type of people.

If you have any leg problems you would probably be better off in Antibes, as Villefranche is very hilly.

That's good to know.

No, I do not have leg problems, except when stuck in a cramped airline seat for 7+ hours.... DVT scare.

We walked up and down the 100 steps to/from our apartment in Positano, no problem.

But I'm glad you told me about the hills in Villefranche. I did not know that.

We enjoyed our day-trip to Antibes. It is quaint and charming and a pretty little harbor, but it is very small. How many nights are you planning there?

We stayed in Juans-les-Pins for 5 days and nights. Antibes and Juans are "sister cities" - they're both beach towns and walking distance of each other. Both have the requisite cafes, markets and shopping. Antibes has an "old town", sp perhaps Antibes gets the nod in that department. Juans has nightlife (not sure about Antibes - we also are not into nightlife, just noticed it walking around Juans). We took trips each evening -- to Monaco, Cannes and St. Tropez (by car). The other evenings we just wandered around Juans - late dinner, some poking around stores, a walk on the beach, etc. Days (except for the day we rented scooters and did Cannes and Antibes that way) were spent at the pool. Breakfast and lunch were pastries and fruit bought at a fabulous local market and next-door bakery in walking distance of our hotel. I'd go back in a minute!

Juan is a very young, very busy town. It is filled with Boutiques
(the largest selection of Bikini's I've ever seen), shoe stores,sportswear and beach equipment stores,and ice cream/gauffre stands.

It's kind of a fun place to shop for not very high end stuff......though with the euro rate, everything feels like it's high end!

My daughter spent 6 weeks there
at a language school when she was a teenager and we've spent a lot of time there over the years, though we have never stayed there.

We always go back to Juan for lunch and a couple of hours of wandering around when we are in the area, which is every spring/summer.
We like eating at the beach there. It's casual,lively and entertaining.

There are lots of restaurants,and discos, and there used to be a casino
( maybe there still is one...).

Antibes is a very nice town and more "grown up" in terms of the people that you will see in town.It has a great market and the Picasso Museum, which is re-openiong this week after a one year, 6 million dollar renovation.

We plan to be on the Cote d'Azur for 7 days total - basing somewhere and day trips each day.

Why not stay in Nice? We love the town, and you can find just about anything you want there: good hotels, outdoor markets, the lovely old town, the Promenade des Anglais, the Mediterranean. It's my idea of heaven.

And from Nice you can go all over by train.

Nice is much bigger than we want. We don't want to stay in a place with 300K+ people. As someone else here put it, we want the Positano, not the Sorrento. Both lovely, just different.

We got the impression we could train to the same places we could from Nice via Antibes or Villefranche.

Is that correct?

The following is from the web site: http://www.beyond.fr/villages/antibes.html

"Train. Antibes is on the main Paris-Lyon-Avignon-Nice-Italy line, with local trains serving most of the coastal towns. Prices vary by day and season, but a typical Antibes-Nice round-trip cost around 42 F. [rail map]

Bus. Bus information is available at the Office de Tourisme, at La Rotonde (Place du Générale de Gaulle), where most of the buses stop.
Nice-Antibes-Aix. The Cars Phocéens bus company provides bus service between Nice and Aix-en-Provence. There are three buses a day; two go via the Route Nationale and stop at Antibes; the other is an express that goes via the autoroute.

The "beyond" website is a great place to visit...there is much information about each provincial town.

Thank you!

Although I think we have settled on Villefranche, still open to options for our Cote d'Azur base.

I found an interesting apartment in Nice on Rue de Ponchettes. Seems to be across from the Promenade.

Would this be a good location or too chaotic?

"Across from the Promenade" is not actually possible, as that wide boulevard runs along the beach. Perhaps the apartment is a block behind the Promenade? That would still be a good location.

Rue des Ponchettes is at the foot of "la Colline du Château", eastern part of "vieux Nice". I have some thoughts regarding the quietness of the area.
By night, i would be careful, specially in may, out of the week end days, when strets of Vieux Nice are quite empty.
Villefranche is hilly but, as a tourist, you dont have much to do between the two corniches. Most of the interesting spots are close to the sea.
Rite there are a lot of stairs.
I would rather stay in Beaulieu (1/2h by foot from where i live) from where you have trains, buses going west and east as already said in a previous message. There is a nice choice of QUIET hotels !
Think of quietness when thinking about French Riviera !

Enjoy your stay with us !

Eze -

Are you saying that Nice is not safe at night - or the part we are looking at anyway?

Villefranche - do you mean not much to do in Villefranche if we stay there? That is OK. We are not looking for "tourist spots".

I am a bit confused, as you said Beaulieau is quiet (not much to do also?), and yes, we are looking for quiet!!, but with some restaurants and shops we could walk to.

We want to rent an apartment, so if you know any or agencies in Beaulieu we might take a look. The ones on VRBO for Beaulieu are too expensive. We need to keep @ $1,600 - $1,800 US for the week.