Landed Early in Nice: A First Morning on the Promenade and in the Old Town

There’s a particular tiredness that comes with an early flight. The sun is already well up over Nice, your body thinks it’s still the middle of the night, and your room won’t be ready for hours.

That last part is the annoying one. Hotels hold check-in until the afternoon, and no amount of standing hopefully at the desk with a boarding pass in your hand will shift it. But that’s how it always goes when you land early, and Nice happens to be a good city to be locked out of for a morning. The centre is small and most of the good bits open early. The sea is never more than a few streets away.

Here’s how I’d spend it.

Take the tram into town

Line 2 runs from the airport into the centre and it is the simple answer. No taxi queue, no crawl along the seafront behind everyone else. You buy a ticket, you get on, and it takes about 20 minutes. A single is under two euros. It’s also how you’ll get back out to the airport at the end of the trip, so you may as well learn it now while you’ve nothing else to do.

The stop is a short walk from Place Masséna, not right on it, and that catches people out. The walk is a few minutes. Place Masséna is the big open square with the red buildings, and it’s the hinge for the rest of the day. The old town is on one side of it and the sea is on the other, both close enough that you’ll wonder why you worried.

Sort your first move while you’re still on the tram, because decisions get harder on a hot pavement with a case in your hand.

Drop the bag before you do anything else

Don’t drag a case through Vieux Nice. The streets are narrow and the surface is uneven, and four hours of dragging a case over them will sour an otherwise good morning. It also shuts a few doors, because some Nice museums won’t take bulky bags and have no cloakroom at all, the Matisse museum among them. Gare de Nice-Ville, the main station, has an official left luggage desk called Bagmobile in the East Hall, open daily from 08:15 to 21:00. The other route is booked storage in a shop or hotel, and there’s usually a spot within a few streets of the market. Sort your luggage storage in Nice the night before if your flight lands early.

The market, then the old town, then socca

Now you’re free. Head for Cours Saleya.

It’s a long, open market street a couple of minutes back from the seafront, and the flower stalls are the bit everyone photographs. Half an hour at a cafe along the edge will do more for your jet lag than the nap you’re not allowed to have yet, so order a coffee before you look at anything properly.

Walk the length of it before you buy anything. Lemons, olives, herbs, tomatoes, jars of things you’ll want to take home and can’t. Buy a bag of fruit for later even if you aren’t hungry now, because it’s the sort of thing that saves you at four in the afternoon.

Then go into Vieux Nice properly. It’s a tangle of tall narrow streets in ochre and faded red, with washing hanging overhead and the shutters closed against the heat. There’s no route to follow and you don’t need one. Turn where it looks interesting, then turn again when you come out somewhere you didn’t expect. You can’t really get lost in it, and the sea is always downhill.

Eat socca. It’s the local chickpea pancake, cooked flat on a big copper tray, scraped off in ragged pieces and served hot with black pepper. You’ll find it at Chez Thérésa’s stall on Cours Saleya, or at Chez Pipo near the port. Cheap, and greasy in the way you want at that hour. I always eat it standing up. One portion is a snack and two is a light lunch, and it’s worth getting early because it sells out.

Castle Hill, then the Promenade

From the eastern edge of the old town you can climb up to Castle Hill. It’s short but steep, and it’s all steps from the old-town end (there’s a lift at the seafront end when it’s running), so take it slowly if you’ve been awake since dawn. I’d go before the middle of the day. Take water up with you, because there’s shade at the top but not much on the way up.

The view is the one you’ve already seen without knowing it. The bay curves away to the west. The old town roofs below you are a jumble of terracotta. Sit down for ten minutes before you come back down.

Come back down to the seafront and walk west with the sea on your left. Within a few minutes you’re on the Promenade des Anglais, where the blue chairs facing the water are as good a spot as any in France. The beach here is pebbles rather than sand, which is worth knowing before you commit to lying on it.

By now it’s probably early afternoon. You’ve had coffee, a market, a maze of streets and socca. You’ve had the view and the walk by the sea, and you still haven’t seen your room. Collect the bag, check in, have a shower, then go straight back out. Nice is better in the evening, when the promenade fills with runners and strollers after the heat drops, and by then you’ll know your way around.