7 Days on the Riviera from Nice
A Full Week: Six Towns on One Rail Line, and a Flex Day at the End
Same spine as our 6-day itinerary , Nice, Villefranche, Monaco, Èze, Antibes, Cannes, with a seventh day for Menton, the town that gets skipped constantly in favor of its more famous neighbor next door on the same line. Base yourself in Nice the entire week and treat every other stop as a spoke, not a separate move. You don’t need a passport for Monaco either, despite it being a separate sovereign country; it’s a train ride, not a border crossing.
| 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 |
| 7 | Menton or flex (Alps/Bellet) | EUR7 train, or car/taxi for Bellet |
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 machines at the airport only sell a €10 round-trip fare, not the €1.70 single, so sort the Lignes d’Azur app before you land if you’re riding trams daily across a full week.
Afternoon in Vieux Nice, socca for lunch, Castle Hill via the free lift for sunset, no admission fee either way. Dinner a street or two back from the Cours Saleya terraces, priced for the view rather than the cooking. The Matisse and Chagall museums are two separate buildings in Cimiez, not a combined stop, and MAMAC has been closed for renovation since 2024, not expected back until roughly 2028; if you want the full neighborhood-level city detail, see our Nice guide . This week is built around what’s outside it.
Day 2: Villefranche-sur-Mer
Five to ten minutes by train , roughly €2-3 one-way, the easiest trip on this coast. 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; spend the afternoon back in Nice on the beach (pebble, not sand, water shoes recommended) or a slower second pass through the old town.
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 to watch. The Oceanographic Museum (around €20), directed by Jacques Cousteau for over three decades, earns the admission; 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, the Belle Époque exterior is free to admire from the plaza regardless. 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 specifically). 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; the climb in midday summer heat is miserable, not scenic. For most first-timers this trip beats a half-day in Monaco outright, same postcard payoff, a fraction of the time, no dress code.
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. Cannes rewards one focused day, not more. Walk La Croisette and the red-carpet steps of the Palais des 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. 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 worth knowing about if you’re timing this around cruise season.
Day 7: Menton, or a flex day if you’d rather go deeper
30 to 35 minutes by train, roughly €7 one-way. Menton gets skipped constantly in favor of Monaco next door on the same line, which is a shame, since it’s the gentler, less-crowded Belle Époque town the coast used to be before the crowds arrived. It’s the actual home of the Fête du Citron, February’s giant citrus-sculpture festival, not Nice, a mix-up that shows up in a surprising number of older guides. Outside festival season, the Basilique Saint-Michel-Archange over the harbor and the Val Rahmeh and Serre de la Madone botanical gardens, both helped along by Menton’s noticeably milder microclimate, are worth the trip on their own. It’s also the closest thing on this route to a genuine Italian-border feel, a twenty-minute walk to the frontier if you want to say you did.
If you’ve already done Menton or want something different for a repeat visit, two options replace it. The Train des Merveilles is a genuinely dramatic two-hour, 120km scenic ride from Nice-Ville into the Roya Valley, climbing past hilltop villages (Sospel, Breil-sur-Roya, Saorge) to over 1,000m, running daily June through September with a bilingual guide narrating the 9:32am departure. Or Bellet, one of France’s smallest wine appellations and the only one contained entirely within a single city’s limits, up in the hills above Nice; it’s the one trip on this list that needs a car or taxi rather than the train, roughly a 20-minute drive, with bottles running €15-30 given the tiny production.
However you spend the day, come back to Nice for a last dinner and a slow final walk on the Promenade des Anglais. Watch your bag specifically at the Grand Arénas tram stop on the way to the airport; it’s a known spot for pickpockets working the ticket machines, and that’s not how you want to end a genuinely good week.