6 Days on the Riviera from Nice
Six Days: Five Coastal Towns, One Base, and the Train Line That Makes It Possible
Same spine as our 5-day itinerary , Nice, Villefranche, Monaco, Èze, Antibes, with a sixth day added for Cannes. By now the pattern should be obvious: one continuous regional rail line runs this entire coast, and every day below either starts or ends at Nice-Ville station.
| Day | Focus | Biggest cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nice orientation | Free, plus socca |
| 2 | Villefranche-sur-Mer | EUR2-3 train |
| 3 | Monaco, full day | EUR20 Oceanographic Museum |
| 4 | Èze village | EUR7-8 Jardin Exotique |
| 5 | Antibes | EUR5-8 train, Picasso Museum extra |
| 6 | Cannes | EUR8-10 train |
Book these before you go
- A Nice hotel room for your nights in the city, since Vieux Nice and Carré d’Or book out fast in summer.
- Monaco’s Oceanographic Museum ticket if you’re visiting in peak season, when the ticket line gets real.
- An Antibes Picasso Museum ticket if you’d rather not queue at the Château Grimaldi.
Day 1: Arrival and Nice orientation
Tram Line 2 covers the airport-to-centre run in 20-30 minutes. The ticket machines at the airport only sell a €10 round-trip fare, not the €1.70 single, so get the Lignes d’Azur app sorted before you land if you’re riding trams daily for six days.
Afternoon in Vieux Nice, socca for lunch, Castle Hill via the free lift for sunset, no admission fee. Dinner a street or two back from the Cours Saleya terraces, priced for the view rather than the food. The Matisse and Chagall museums, if you have a spare hour later this week, are two separate buildings in Cimiez, not one combined stop, and MAMAC is closed for renovation until roughly 2028 regardless of what an older post tells you. Full city-level detail in our Nice guide ; this trip is built around what’s outside it.
Day 2: Villefranche-sur-Mer
Five to ten minutes by train , roughly €2-3 one-way. Villefranche’s harbor is one of the deepest natural anchorages on the Mediterranean, which keeps the water clearer than central Nice. Wander the covered old-town lanes, see the Chapelle Saint-Pierre (decorated inside by Jean Cocteau in 1957, small entry fee), and climb the free Citadelle Saint-Elme courtyard. It’s a half-day trip; use the afternoon back in Nice for the beach (pebble, not sand, water shoes recommended).
Day 3: Monaco, the full day
7 to 25 minutes by train (23 minutes average), roughly €6-7 one-way, 55 or more trains a day. Walk the old town and palace square; the changing of the guard runs at 11:55am daily, free. The Oceanographic Museum (around €20), directed by Jacques Cousteau for over three decades, earns its admission fee; stacking it with the palace apartments is cheaper on the French Riviera Pass . The Casino de Monte-Carlo charges roughly €17 for the gaming rooms and requires a passport or ID, a real dress code, and 18+; skip it if gambling isn’t the point and admire the Belle Époque exterior for free instead. Dinner back in Nice, since prices near the casino square run high for the same quality.
Day 4: Èze village
No direct train; bus 82 (Lignes d’Azur) or the regional 602 from Nice’s Vauban bus station, about 30 minutes, every 30-45 minutes on weekdays (check the 602’s Sunday service, it can thin out badly). Or train to Èze-sur-Mer, then bus 83 uphill, or the steep Chemin de Nietzsche path. Give the village two to three hours: a free Fragonard perfume tour, and the Jardin Exotique at the summit (roughly €7-8), the best cliffside view on this stretch of coast. Go in the morning; midday summer heat turns the climb miserable.
Day 5: Antibes
20 to 25 minutes by train, roughly €5-8 one-way. The Musée Picasso sits in the Château Grimaldi, the clifftop fortress where Picasso worked for several months in 1946, and it’s a tighter, less crowded visit than most Riviera art stops. The Marché Provençal, a covered morning market a few streets back, is genuinely less touristy than Nice’s own Cours Saleya. Walk the old ramparts, and if there’s time, Fort Carré, the star-shaped 16th-century fort on the point, is a short walk beyond the old town.
Day 6: Cannes
35 to 40 minutes by train, roughly €8-10 one-way, on the same line you’ve been using all week (Cannes-Antibes itself is a further 10-minute hop, so the two pair well if you’d rather combine them on a shorter trip). Cannes rewards one focused day, not more. Walk La Croisette and the red-carpet steps of the Palais des Festivals, worth seeing once even without any interest in film festivals, then head up to Le Suquet, the old town on the hill, for a quieter version of the city than the waterfront gives you. The Marché Forville behind Le Suquet is a genuine working market and a better lunch stop than anything on the Croisette itself. Worth knowing if you’re timing this around cruise season: from January 1, 2026, Cannes caps cruise-ship arrivals to under-1,000-passenger vessels and 6,000 total daily visitors, a real and current overtourism move that’s already thinned out how crowded the old port feels on a given day.
Come back to Nice for a final dinner. Watch your bag closely at the Grand Arénas tram stop on the way to the airport tomorrow; it’s a known spot for pickpockets working the ticket machines, not how you want to close out six good days.