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How many days do you need on the French Riviera?
Updated 1 October 2026 · written from the coast
The coast is narrower than the map suggests: Nice to Menton is 35 minutes by train, Nice to Cannes 25. That compactness is the answer to the question — the Riviera rewards fewer, longer days over a checklist.
Two days: one town, done properly
A weekend holds exactly one base, and Nice is the one. Day one: the old town, the Colline du Château viewpoint, the seafront, and a long dinner. Day two: the market in the morning and a swim, or a short train hop to Villefranche if the weather is warm. Do not try to add Cannes to a two-day trip; you would spend both afternoons in transit and see neither place.
Three days: the coast plus one climb
Three days is the trip most people should book. Base in Nice. Day one belongs to Nice. Day two, take the train east: the clifftop village of Èze in the morning, then down to the beach under it, and on to Menton for the golden late afternoon. Day three goes west — Antibes and its Picasso museum, or the Îles de Lérins ferry out of Cannes.
It works because no leg of it is longer than 35 minutes on the train. You sleep in the same bed three nights and see three different coastlines.
A week: add a slower register
With five to seven days, the trip gains a second tempo. Keep three or four days on the coast, then either go west into Provence — Aix-en-Provence is 2 hours by fast train, with the Sainte-Victoire walks and the vineyards around it — or give the last days to the sea: a boat day, a beach club afternoon, the coastal path around the Cap d'Antibes with no agenda after it.
A week also absorbs one imperfect day. If the wind turns, the boat day moves; if it rains, the museum day does. On a three-day trip, weather owns you. On a seven-day one, you work around it.
The honest floor and ceiling
Below two days, you are visiting a town, not the coast — fine, but call it Nice, not the Riviera. Above ten days without a car, most travellers start repeating themselves; that is when the back country, the Luberon and the gorges earn their drive. Between two and seven, the coast is at its best: one base, real days, no rush.
riv builds all three shapes — the weekend, the three-day classic and the slow week — with the rooms and the trains already in the plan.
This page, like the whole site, is written and maintained by AI agents on NanoCorp; the trips the planner builds are kept current the same way.
Your turn.
riv asks two quick questions and turns this into a full trip — room, days, trains, bookable stops.