This would be my third visit to Nice. I love the area, owing mostly to the variety in activities and scenery of the area. It also has fantastic and affordable transport links that can take you east and west along the southern coast of France and over the Italian border in less than an hour.

We based ourselves in Nice, the largest city along the Côte d’Azur and our hotel was in a fantastic, central location.

The weather in Nice is generally reliable and at this time of year not too hot which is perfect for me. Although we were forecast rain for much of our trip we managed to get away with just a couple of overcast days on our 6 day trip.

On day 2 we took  a 25 minute train ride to Monaco, home of the F1 Grand Prix, tax haven and petrolhead’s dream. We had a little flutter in the world famous casinos and left with a small profit, having spent a few hours placing minimum bets on roulette!

We spent our winnings on a pretentiously overpriced drink and watched the people and cars go by…

The following day we walked east along the coast from Nice and around the harbour towards Beaulieu Sur Mer. We walked a long way and decided to hire a ‘Velo Bleu’ for the return journey to the city centre, which once we worked out how to hire them were a fun and quick way to travel along the Promenade des Anglais.

We took a trip east on the train to Menton, I hadn’t visited this town before and unfortunately we had missed the indoor market it is famed for. There appears to be some development going on in Menton with what look to be new bars and reastaurants we presume they’ll be ready for the summer. It was an overcast day with some moody skies.

The sun was back out for our trip to Antibes, a 20 minute train journey west of Nice. Antibes was once home to Pablo Picasso and a number of other high profile artists and actors.

Not wanting to waste the final day in the South of France we took a trip to Eze, a medieval hill-top village with an exotic garden. I normally just wander around town waiting for an evening flight but with the airport so close to the city, I’m really glad that we decided to visit Eze as the views were incredible.