The French Riviera on a long weekend: a decisive 3–4 day itinerary from Nice

The right shape for a long weekend

Three or four days on the Riviera is not a shortened holiday, it is a different kind of holiday — and it works if you accept one rule: one base, four outings, no changes of hotel. Every hour spent on luggage, check-in and finding a new station comes straight out of the little you have.

The base is Nice, for the reasons set out in Nice as a base for the Riviera: the airport is in the city, the station is central, there is a tram, and the whole rest of the coast is less than an hour away. If you have seven days, the full version is our week-long itinerary — this article is the compressed, decided version of it, not a summary.

The shape: arrive Friday evening, Nice on Saturday, Monaco on Sunday, a choice between two excursions on Monday. Out on Monday evening or Tuesday morning.

Friday evening: an arrival that is not wasted

The landing rule: try to be on the ground before seven. A flight that gets in at half past eleven at night does not cost you an evening, it costs you Saturday morning as well.

From the airport into town it is tram 2, which links both terminals to Jean Médecin and then to the port. The airport return ticket, "L'Aéro", is €10. Twenty-odd minutes and you are at the hotel.

Friday evening is not programmed. Drop the bags, walk the Promenade des Anglais at sunset — it is five minutes from almost anywhere central — go into Vieux Nice for a socca and a glass of rosé, and sleep early. Do not attempt Monaco on arrival night. Do not attempt anything that needs a ticket.

Saturday: the Nice day, on foot

The one day with no train, and the best of the three.

Morning: the Cours Saleya, the old town's market — flowers and produce, noise, things to taste. One date worth remembering: on Mondays the produce market is replaced by the antiques market, so Saturday is ideal. Then the lanes of Vieux Nice, without a map, and a socca or a pan-bagnat for lunch.

Midday: the free lift at the eastern end of the Quai des États-Unis goes up to the Colline du Château. There is no castle left, but the view over the bay and the orange tiles of the old town is the photograph you will keep. A waterfall, pines, shade.

Afternoon, your choice, decided by the weather: either the beach — pebbles, not sand, and better to know that now — or the Cimiez hill, with the Matisse and Chagall museums and the Roman ruins, a quarter of an hour by bus from the centre.

Evening: the port Lympia, round the other side of the hill, for dinner with boats instead of traffic.

The day's transport: a single ticket is €1.70, valid 74 minutes including connections. The €7 day pass pays for itself from about the fifth journey — on a Saturday like this you will not make five.

Sunday: Monaco

For most people this is the day that justifies the trip.

The train: Nice-Ville to Monaco-Monte-Carlo, €6.10 one way, about 25 minutes. Nothing is reserved; you buy at the machine in the station that morning. With a Zou! card the fare drops to roughly €4.30, and from five travellers upwards the mini-group fare comes down to about €3.10 each — worth asking at the counter if there are a few of you.

Sunday is, against expectations, a good day for Monaco: the museums are open, the principality is calmer, and you did not come to shop.

The hour-by-hour programme — the Rock and the palace, the Oceanographic Museum, the casino square, the port, the Formula 1 corners — is in one day in Monaco. What is worth saying here is only the join: Monaco's station is underground, with lifts and exits at two different ends of the city, so pick your exit according to where you intend to start. Trains back to Nice, on the same line, run until late.

Monday: Èze and Menton, or Cannes and the Lérins islands

If you have a fourth day, this is the weekend's only real decision. Both options are on the same coastal line, in opposite directions.

Eastward: Èze plus Menton. Èze-sur-Mer is a station at sea level; the medieval village is high above it on its rock, reached by bus or by the Nietzsche path — an hour of serious climbing, not a stroll. Up there: stone lanes, the exotic garden, and a panorama that has earned its place on every brochure of the coast. Then on by train to Menton: €7.70 from Nice, about 40 minutes, the last French town before Italy, the mildest climate on the coast, citrus, gardens and a stepped old town with far fewer people in it.

Westward: Cannes plus the Lérins islands. About half an hour by train, fare indicatively €7–8, 2026. La Croisette is, honestly, a shopping boulevard with a sea view; the real reason to come is the fifteen-minute ferry to Sainte-Marguerite — pines, a fort, clear water, not a car in sight. The detail is in a day trip to Cannes.

The recommendation, undiplomatically: take Èze plus Menton. After a city day and a principality day, what the weekend is missing is a stone village and a quiet town — and the eastern option delivers both in a single day, on the line you already used on Sunday, with no ferry timetable and no risk of being stranded on an island. Choose Cannes and the Lérins in two cases: if it is July or August and you want a genuine swimming day, or if the climb at Èze is not realistic for someone in the group.

How the line works in detail — tickets, machines, what to check before you go — is in the Riviera by train. One warning applies to either option: check the line on SNCF Connect or TER Sud for your own dates. Engineering works and strikes do cut the coastal line, sometimes for weeks, and a long weekend has no slack in it at all.

What you cut: Saint-Tropez does not fit

Said plainly, because saying it is a service: Saint-Tropez cannot be done on a long weekend out of Nice. It has no station. The rail version stops at Saint-Raphaël, from where there is a boat of about an hour or a bus that, in summer, settles into the traffic. Realistically that is three hours each way in season. That is one whole day out of three, for a harbour and a square.

Also cut, without debate: Grasse and the perfume factories; Antibes and Cannes on the same day; and the hire car — parking in Nice and in Monaco costs more than every train ticket in the itinerary above put together, and nothing in it needs a car.

What it costs at the comfortable tier

The part that surprises people: transport for the whole weekend, per person, comes in under €40. Monaco and back, Menton and back, the trams, the airport ticket. That is all of it.

For the rest, indicatively for 2026 and at the comfortable tier — a three- or four-star hotel in central Nice, good food without starred restaurants, two or three museum entries — the hard part is the room: out of season it settles somewhere around €150–250 a night, with serious peaks in July and August and in festival weeks. Over three nights, per person and excluding the flight, a comfortable long weekend comes out around €500–750. The full tiers, with what can be cut and what cannot, are in our Riviera cost guide.

Why a hotel a few steps from Nice-Ville station is worth paying for

On a three-day trip the geography of the hotel matters more than the hotel.

Two of your three programmed days begin at Nice-Ville station. Ten minutes of walking each morning, plus ten each evening, multiplied by four, is close to two hours: half a day of holiday, spent on a pavement. On top of that, tram 2 to the airport runs through Jean Médecin, a few minutes from the station, so the departure gets simple too.

The trade-off, honestly stated: the station district is not Nice's prettiest — it is functional, busy, and less pleasant after dark than Vieux Nice or the Carré d'Or. On a week-long holiday, another area is worth it. On three days, proximity beats charm. The neighbourhoods are compared separately, and so are the places to stay.

Two checks before you leave and you are done: the train line for your dates, and the closing days of whichever museums you actually care about — on this coast, Mondays and Tuesdays are the usual traps. Nothing else needs reserving.