Pebbles, not sand
The light comes off the water sideways, and by ten the Promenade des Anglais belongs to runners, cyclists and people on rollerblades. The beach is grey pebbles the size of hens' eggs, which is why new arrivals walk into the sea like storks. After two hundred years of hosting strangers, the Niçois are polite to you in the way of people who have seen it all.
€24 for a bus, €35 for a deckchair
Nice Le Grand Tour, the open-top hop-on-hop-off, charges €24 for an adult day ticket and €28 for two days at the time of writing. Nice is flat, the seafront is one straight line, and a tram ticket is €1.70. I have never found the extra €22 in there, not with free lifts up the Colline du Château.
Castel Plage publishes its rates: €30 a half day, €35 a day for a lounger and parasol, €7 for a towel. Standard on this coast, and the same municipal shingle, in the same sea, as the free beach either side. Nice has 23 public beaches against 14 concessions, and I use those.
Libération, and it's all gone by half past one
The tourist market is the Cours Saleya. The city's own is the Marché de la Libération, twenty minutes north on tram 1, along avenue Malausséna and the forecourt of the old Gare du Sud.
The municipal rules are blunt: Tuesday to Sunday, selling 06:00 to 13:00, stalls cleared by 13:30. Arrive at 12:45 and you get a man with a hose. I go around eight on a Thursday, while the fish is still moving. Look for chard, which the Niçois bake into a sweet tart, violet artichokes eaten raw, courgette flowers. Bring cash.
Your Parcazur clock stops at 22 hours
Two conditions on the park-and-ride deal, and people miss both.
The space is free only if you make a return trip on Lignes d'Azur the same day, and the ticket for it, the "1 Aller-retour", is €3.40 including that day's parking.
And the round-the-clock Parcazurs state that parking "ne peut dépasser 22 heures consécutives". Parcazur Henri Sappia, Charles Ehrmann, Vauban and Tzarewitch run on that rule, and the rest shut overnight. You cannot leave the car there while you sail to Corsica.
The hill with no castle
Colline du Château. There is no château: French troops took the fortress in 1705 and Louis XIV had it demolished the year after, leaving 93 metres of rock, a fake waterfall from 1885 and the best view in Nice. Two lifts run up from the quai des États-Unis, free since 2011; the park opens 08:30 to 20:00 in summer, to 18:00 in winter.
Promenade des Anglais. Seven kilometres that began in 1824 as a modest path, paid for at the urging of an English clergyman, Lewis Way, to give winter work to people who had none. The blue chairs are free.
Cours Saleya. Flowers Tuesday to Saturday until 17:30, produce and fish Tuesday to Sunday until 14:30. On Mondays about 180 antique dealers take it over, which is the day I would come.
Cathédrale orthodoxe russe Saint-Nicolas. Onion domes and a worked-metal iconostasis. Entry free, guided tour €10, dress code enforced because it is a working church.
Musée Matisse. An ochre villa in Cimiez beside a Roman arena, €12, closed Tuesdays. For two museums or more, the Pass 10 Musées is €15.
Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate. Begun in 1650. In 1658 the vault came down and killed the bishop who had ordered it.
Place Masséna. Red-ochre arcades and a checkerboard pavement, crossed by tram 1 on battery power with its pantograph down.
Socca at Chez Pipo, eaten with your fingers
Socca is chickpea flour, water, olive oil and salt, fired in a wide copper pan in a wood oven until it blisters. It comes in hot, half-burnt scraps, eaten standing with black pepper and no cutlery. Cold socca wastes everyone's time.
Pissaladière is onions cooked down for hours on bread dough with pissalat, an anchovy paste, and black olives: no tomato, no cheese. Pan bagnat is a round loaf soaked in oil with tuna or anchovy, egg and raw vegetables, nothing cooked. Petits farcis and a salade niçoise with no potato finish the list.
My first stop is Chez Pipo near the port, Wednesday to Sunday, 11:30 to 14:30 and 17:30 to 22:00, no bookings; the tourist office lists the carte at €3.50 to €7.50. Sitting down, Acchiardo has been in one family since 1927, and La Table Alziari is the other address I hand out. One filter works: the tourist office's Cuisine Nissarde label, judged on recipe and method, held by twenty-seven places at the time of writing.
Twenty days in February when the Prom shuts
Carnaval de Nice 2027 runs 9 to 28 February, themed Vive l'Amour, on Place Masséna and the seafront. Programme and ticket prices were not published at the time of writing.
The traffic plan matters more to a driver than the floats. In 2026 restrictions ran 12 to 28 February, with the Promenade des Anglais closed both ways from rue Sauvan to boulevard Gambetta, plus Place Masséna and avenue de Verdun, Saturdays 11:30 to 01:30 and Tuesdays 17:30 to 01:00. Parking Masséna shut outright and tram 1 skipped three central stops. Park north of it.
Nice Jazz Fest took 23 to 25 July in 2026, with no 2027 dates out yet. In September the Ironman 70.3 World Championship banned parking on the quais and the whole Promenade from 20:30 on 11 September to 02:00 on 14 September.
What's on
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Every Monday, 07:00–18:00 | Marché à la brocante: about 180 antique and second-hand dealers take over the Cours Saleya and Place Pierre Gautier |
| 9–28 February 2027 | Carnaval de Nice 2027, 'Vive l'Amour', on Place Masséna and the Promenade des Anglais. Full programme and ticket prices not published at the time of writing |
| Late July (23–25 July in 2026) | Nice Jazz Fest, two stages in the centre. 2027 dates not announced at the time of writing |
| September (9–13 September in 2026) | Ironman 70.3 World Championship: the quais and the whole Promenade des Anglais close, with a long parking ban along the seafront |