2 Days on the French Riviera from Nice

Two Days: Nice as Your Base, Plus One Train Ride Out

Forty-eight hours is not enough time to do the whole Cote d’Azur, so don’t try. Two days means Nice does the heavy lifting and you squeeze in exactly one coastal escape by train. That’s the deal, and honestly, it works better than cramming three towns into a rushed blur.

Day Focus
1 Promenade, Vieux Nice, Castle Hill via the free lift
2 Cours Saleya market, Villefranche-sur-Mer day trip, beach

Book these before you go

Day 1: Land, Walk, Climb, Eat Well

Tram Line 2 gets you from the airport to Jean-Medecin in 20-30 minutes for a single 1.70 EUR fare, just make sure you board toward Port Lympia, not the Centre Administratif branch. Here’s the annoying part nobody warns you about: the ticket machines right at the airport only sell a 10 EUR round-trip fare. The cheap single fare needs either the Lignes d’Azur app or a reusable 2 EUR card bought at a tram-stop machine once you’re past the terminals, so decide before you land whether that’s worth the extra step.

Drop your bags and go straight for the Promenade des Anglais, free, seven kilometers of curved seafront, and yes, sit in one of the blue chairs, they’re free too and fully back in place after this spring’s restoration. Cut into Vieux Nice next for the pastel facades and narrow lanes, then climb Castle Hill for the payoff view over the Baie des Anges. Take the free public lift instead of the stairs, this is my one hard opinion of the whole trip: the view is identical either way and the lift removes the only real friction point that makes people skip the hill entirely.

Lunch is socca, the chickpea pancake this whole city is built around. Chez Pipo at 13 rue Bavastro has been cooking it in a 300-year-old stone oven since forever, roughly 12 EUR a plate, and it beats anything served on the Promenade by a wide margin. For dinner, walk two streets back from Cours Saleya rather than eating on the square itself, the terrace restaurants right on the market are priced for foot traffic, not flavor.

Day 2: Market Morning, Then a Train to Villefranche

Get to Cours Saleya before 9am while the flower and produce stalls are still fresh (Mondays flip the whole square to an antiques market instead, worth knowing if your dates land that way). Then head to the station and catch the TER to Villefranche-sur-Mer, 8-14 minutes and genuinely the easiest day trip on this coast. It’s one of the deepest natural harbors in the Mediterranean, the old town is a fraction of Vieux Nice’s crowd, and you can walk the whole waterfront in under two hours.

Back in Nice by mid-afternoon, spend what’s left on the beach. Every beach here is pebble, not sand, so bring water shoes or a thick mat, your feet will thank you. If you skipped a museum on Day 1, this is also your window for the Chagall or Matisse collections, though with only two days I’d genuinely rather you keep the beach time.

Practical Notes

Lignes d’Azur trams and buses run 1.70 EUR a ride with a 74-minute transfer window, or 7 EUR for a day pass if you’re moving around a lot. Watch your bag at the Grand Arenas tram stop near the airport and in the Cours Saleya crowds, both are known pickpocket spots. If a salade nicoise shows up with boiled potato or green beans on the plate, that’s a tourist-menu version, not the real one, the authentic recipe never had either.

Two days means Monaco, Eze, and Cannes all wait for next time, and that’s genuinely fine, the 4-day itinerary is where a Monaco day trip earns its slot, and the full Nice, France base guide breaks down every coastal train option in one place. One last concrete move before you fly home: buy your Villefranche return ticket on the SNCF Connect app before you leave Nice, Villefranche’s station is a small, largely unstaffed halte and you don’t want to be figuring out a machine there with a train timetable running on you.