Ciao, nice

If you arrive in Nice by air, you will get straight into the city’s most beautiful avenue — the Promenade des Anglais — the Mediterranean’s Champs-Elysées. The magnificent seaside promenade runs between the luxury hotels and the beach, all in the shade of the very typical feather duster palms. Roller skaters glide easily between sun chairs, limousines, and beach restaurants. This is Nice’s cosmetic face. The city’s heart is a bit further away — by the Cours Saleya market square. The main artery is la Rue Droite. Stroll around the maze of small streets in the old town, la Vieille Ville, you can wind up into a tiny square here, a tiny alley there, or a cool church beyond it. Are you looking for shopping? You will find the shopping district above Place Masséna, where the big department stores and surrounding streets with names like Rue Paradis and Rue de la Liberté display their shops. Most buses depart from Place Masséna if you want to travel up into the hills above Nice. A number of fairly sleepy and well-heeled suburbs stretch from the Chagall museum to the inescapable Cimiez hills to the north. The hills are a must, both for the Matisse museum and the view or just for a picnic in an olive grove, with or without the summer jazz festival. Eastern Nice is a bit more down-market and needs more local knowledge — apart from the area close to the harbour at Port Olympia. The nightlife there has been given a boost recently, ever since a low-cost cruise ship started to drop anchor at the port in the summer of 2005. To the east lies the billionaires’ playground of Cap Ferrat, the Eagle’s Nest of Eze, and Beaulieu-sur-Mer, which has been there since antiquity. To the west, the road passes world-famous artist’s colonies such as Saint-Paul de Vence.