Yulko Polo Travel Blog

General Info

Country: France & Monaco | Languages: French | Currency: Euro (EUR) | Flag: 🇫🇷 & 🇲🇨 | When visited: April 2025

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🗺️ Check out my new “Now and Then” travel account on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nowandthenjourney

🚗 How to commute

The best and the most affordable way to reach the city centre or Central Station from the “Côte d'Azur” Airport is the public transport: tram (L2), and/or bus, or train (TER). It's important to note, that if you arrive to the Terminal 2, you won't be able to buy a 1 way tram-ticket to the centre, because the machines on the station are selling either round-trip tickets or top-ups for the plastic travel card “La Carte”, which you also can't by there. On the Information counter, we were advised to go 1 station to the Terminal 1 with any tram, and buy our 1 way tickets there. Kinda weird, but it's how it was in April 2025. Another essential thing is that, when you buy a 1 way ticket from the machine, you will always get “La Carte” plastic card and will have to pay for it additionally. So if you already have one, you just need to top it up, and if you travel as a group of 2–3 people, it may make sense to buy 1 card and top it up with multiple trips, which you can validate for multiple people directly in the tram or bus. Thus, you'll save the card price :) Public transport in the city includes buses and trams, as well as trains and buses for inter-city travels.

🏨 Where to stay

We've been staying at one of Best Western Plus hotels near the Nice Ville station. It was pretty cosy and comfortable, and was located really convenient just in few minutes walk from Nice Ville station and the main walking street Av. Jean Médecin with multiple restaurants, shops, sightseeings etc.

🍽️ What and where to eat

Nice is a place where one could enjoy tasty and not that expensive food! Starting from tasty dishes and pastries for take away in big supermarkets like MONOPRIX and ending up with fresh seafood and confectionery in various cafés and restaurants. One can find a lot of Asian and Italian food as well as cuisine from all over the world there. Here are a few places we liked:

• MONOPRIX with multiple location in the city, where you always can buy some hot and not food for takeaway as well as pastries. You also can buy there fresh seafood to cook yourself if it's possible (though we haven't done this):

• Gusti Restaurant – a place where we ended up having a diner on a daily basis. It was super tasty and pretty cheap to eat a fresh seafood there. One could eat salads, burgers and pasta, or go for meat or fish dishes which are served with 2 various side dishes of your choice (which include pasta, risotto, salads, French fries, ratatouille and more other options), a sauce of your choice and tasty fresh baguette. We tried various dishes from fish menu and most of the side dishes. Portions were enormous and always tasty!

• BONITO – Mexican Tacos – a small, beautiful and recently opened place with just incredible tacos, burritos, and quesadilla! The owners are also a super nice couple, doing their best to make guests happy and comfortable.

• WOK 2 NICE – where you can put together a delicious wok with ingredients of your choice.

• CLAY – small and outstanding café for a quick snacks and delicious and surprisingly cheap coffee.

👀 What to do and what to see

• Walk around the city. Make sure to drink a coffee or tea with some delicious pastry and/or eat a lavender ice-cream from one of the small shops close to the sea.

• Visit book stores and especially La Sorbonne, which is just an amazing 2 levels store.

• Check out the Old Nice, Colline du Château and Port de Nice. Make sure you walk to the very top of the park and on the go check various beautiful things like a waterfall “Cascade du Château”, an archaeological site “Fouilles archaeologiques”, various viewpoints like “Point de vue sur le port” and so on.

• Go to the beach. Enjoy sun, beautiful water and walk along the promenade.

• Go for 1-day trip to Monaco. From Nice you can either take a Train TER (for ex. from Nice Ville station) or a Bus #600 (from Square Normandie Niemen), which will take you to Monaco in ca. 25 minutes or ca. 1 hour respectively. I would recommend going by bus at least in one direction: if you will sit on the ride side, you will be able to enjoy amazing views during the road. In Monaco, you basically can walk through the whole country within 1 day if you wish, because it's tiny. Of course, popular destinations to check out are Casino de Monte-Carlo, crystal blue Larvotto beach, Prince's Palace of Monaco, Monaco Tourism Office (where you can get yourself Monaco passport) and so on.

We have been visiting one of famous Tennis tournament here – ATP1000 Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters, and can totally recommend it too!

• or go to other cities of the French Riviera (or Côte d'Azur region).

💡 Some highlights

• We were surprised, but Nice turned out to be cheaper than similar Italian, Greece or Croatian cities located on the Mediterranean Sea. Everything including a flight, accommodation, public transport, grocery, meals in restaurants etc. were cheaper! The only thing with high prices were cigarettes, which cost there 10+ EUR per pack.
• Due to the great transportation and affordable prices, Nice could be a good place to stay with affordable prices and from here to go to other small picturesque towns on the seashore to have fewer tourists and enjoy beautiful nature and various beaches.
• It was fun to find out that here in McDonalds they have reusable everything from cups to French fries holders! And they are also pretty stylish and nice:
• If you will visit Monaco, make sure to use one of the lifts they use to help pedestrians to move around the city easier, as it's located on various levels, and it's really tough to walk from the beach back to the city centre.