NICE, FRANCE

If you want all the urban excitement of a major city in a gorgeous setting (the French Riviera) Nice is the place to go. We spent a week in a bed and breakfast/villa in the hills above Nice and the views of Nice and the sea beyond were fantastic. We went into Nice on a number of occasions and the old town with its market (every morning) is definitely worth visiting - but be warned that the tour buses stop there and as a result everything is overpriced. Also there are many restaurants to choose from in the old town and around the harbor - the trick is finding one that is authentically local and not geared toward tourists. The owner of the villa we stayed in strongly recommended Le Marlin in the old Harbor but it was closed the night we went.Note that the beach is rocky not sand but is still quite scenic. We went to a few small beaches and my favorite was in Cap D'Ail. It was in a small cove and you had to climb down stairs built into a cliff to get to the beach. The water was calm clear and the beach very clean. There are also two restaurants but they were a little pricey.My favorite area was Villfranche-sur-Mer and we went there twice for Dinner at a restaurant called Cosmo right in the old harbor. It has outside seating overlooking the water and a chapel (St. Peter's)that was painted by Jean Cocteau.One exciting event that happened when we were there was that the Mistral (great wind that originates in Siberia and blows down the Rhone into Provence) blew for a couple days (I didn't know that it blew in the summer) and it got very windy in the hills. When it passed the views of the neighboring mountains were spectacularly clear.There are also some very fine museums in Nice including probably the best Chagall museum and a Matisse museum as well.