The Côte d'Azur earns its name the moment you arrive. The light is different here — sharper, more Mediterranean — and the sea really is that shade of blue. It stretches from the Italian border past Nice, Cannes, and Toulon to Marseille in the west, covering some 200 kilometres of coastline backed by the Maritime Alps and the Var hills.
Nice is the natural capital: a proper city with great food, a dense tangle of museums, and the famous Promenade des Anglais along a wide pebbly beach. Cannes is smaller and more self-consciously glamorous, built around a film festival and a harbour full of yachts. Further west, Marseille is the counterweight to all that — rough-edged, energetic, and genuinely French in a way the resort towns sometimes aren't.
Inland is often overlooked but worth it. Villages like Gréolières and the perched towns above Nice and Antibes sit in the pre-Alps, a completely different landscape from the coast below. The Train des Pignes from Nice to Digne-les-Bains is one of the most scenic journeys in France.
The coast gets genuinely crowded in July and August. May, June, and September are better — the light is excellent, the crowds are manageable, and everything is still open.
