Does that look Nice?

Hot on the heels of our comments about the characteristics of the various coastlines of southern France, here is a photo of the most popular seasort resort in France – Nice.

Nice is also a great place to visit, with both easy access to the sunny Mediterranean, and plenty to amuse you in the town when you can’t bear the sea any longer…

…some of the highlights of Nice include:

- the little cottages behind the harbour – once little storage sheds they are now glamorous boutiques and restaurants

- the Promenade des Anglais, a long established walk along the seafront

- the market on Cours Saleya, just behind the Promenade des Anglais

- the cathedral and pedestrianised squares in the older part of the town

- the sophisticated Cimiez region to the north of Nice

- the impressive Matisse museum

and much more besides.

The downside, as you see from the picture, is that the seafront itself – especially in central Nice, can become just a teensy bit crowded and it might not always be easy for your children to run around as much as they might like on the beach…

Beaches of southern France

France has over 3000 kilometres of coastline, and a great deal of it is accessible. In the south of France the main areas of coast include:

• the French Riviera / Cote d’Azur section that runs from Marseille to the Italian border
• the Languedoc coast, also on the Mediterranean, that runs from the border with Spain around to the Camargue (on the border between Languedoc and Provence regions)
• the Atlantic coast, that stretches in ann almost unbroken line from Arcachon the coast west of Bordeaux) down to the border with Spain at Hendaye, beyond Biarritz

But which should you choose…and why?

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Is this a tourist attraction?

We have a couple of travel websites, and one of the challenges of operating a tourist site is deciding whether something is a tourist attraction or not, and how ‘honestly’ to paint a picture of a town or attraction.

Of course, everyone tries to be honest, but it’s not always to give a balanced picture. If we visit somewhere on a cloudy November afternoon when it’s raining we are unlikely to come away with the same impression as someone visiting in May, when the sun is shining and you can sit outside your cafe having a drink.

Many places are very pleasant to visit, and we recommend them heartily, but don’t really have any great attractons or monuments – so it’s hard to say very much! So while we try and identify what was nice about a town it is often hard to explain.

On the other hand, some towns are positively littered with historical monuments and places of interest – but also have a lot of unattractive parts in between, or nowhere to sit down etc. These places we end up writing lots of information about…and it’s not very convincing to then seem unenthusiastic!

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