The French Riviera… it’s one of those places that sounds fancy when you say it out loud, but when you’re actually there, sweating in a crowded train station in Nice with your backpack cutting into your shoulders, it feels less like a movie set and more like, well, real life I guess.
I remember my first morning there, walking down to the Promenade des Anglais before anyone else was awake, and the way the pebbles on the beach made this weird crunching sound under my feet - not sand, mind you, but actual stones that hurt to walk on barefoot but somehow felt more authentic than any sandy beach I’d ever been to. The Mediterranean stretched out forever, this impossible blue that changes color depending on how the light hits it, and I stood there thinking about all the famous people who’d probably stood in that exact spot, but mostly I was just trying to figure out if I had enough euros for coffee.
The Glitter and the Grime
Nice is a whole thing - you’ve got these grand hotels with their perfect facades and manicured gardens, and then you turn a corner and there’s laundry hanging from apartment balconies and the smell of someone’s lunch cooking, garlic and herbs and something I couldn’t identify but made my stomach growl. The old town, Vieux Nice, winds around itself like a maze, and I got lost there for hours, which wasn’t really getting lost because every wrong turn led to something worth seeing - a tiny church with worn stone steps, a market stall selling lavender soap that smelled like my grandmother’s closet, a cafĂ© where the owner yelled at pigeons in rapid-fire French.
The contrast hits you everywhere along the coast. Monaco with its yacht-filled harbor and casino where I felt underdressed in my best shirt, but then you walk along the coastal path and find little coves where locals swim and the water is so clear you can see fish darting between the rocks. Cannes during film festival season is pure chaos - paparazzi and red carpets and people in sunglasses that cost more than my rent - but in the early morning, the beach is just a beach, and the street cleaners are already working to erase yesterday’s glamour.
Salt-Stained Afternoons
What I remember most isn’t the famous stuff, though. It’s the way the salt air made everything feel sticky after a while, how my hair got all weird and wavy from the humidity, and the taste of that first cold beer at a beachside cafĂ© in Antibes when the sun was setting and everything turned golden. The server spoke broken English and I spoke broken French, and somehow we managed to have this whole conversation about football and the weather and how Americans always seem surprised that French people can be nice.
I spent an afternoon in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, this medieval village perched on a hill, and every postcard makes it look magical, but what struck me was how the stones in the streets were polished smooth by centuries of footsteps, and how the light filtered through the narrow alleys in these perfect golden rectangles. There was this artist’s studio where an old man was painting the same view of the valley that probably a thousand other artists had painted, but he looked so content, so absorbed in getting the color of the olive trees just right.
The beaches… God, the beaches. Everyone talks about Saint-Tropez like it’s paradise, and maybe it is if you’ve got the money for it, but I preferred the smaller places - Cassis with its white limestone cliffs and this tiny harbor where fishing boats still come in every morning, or the hidden coves near Menton where you had to climb down rocky paths and the water was so cold it took your breath away.
Where the Stories Live
But here’s the thing about the French Riviera - it’s not just about the places, it’s about the in-between moments. The train rides along the coast where you catch glimpses of the sea through tunnel exits, the way the light changes as you move from the Italian border toward Saint-Tropez, the smell of pine trees mixed with sea salt in the hills above Cannes. It’s about sitting in a cafĂ© in Menton, eating lemon tart that’s so tart it makes your face scrunch up, and watching people walk by - old men playing boules, teenagers on scooters, tourists like me trying to look like they belong.
I think about the people who live there year-round, not just the visitors passing through. The woman who ran the small hotel in Villefranche-sur-Mer, how she remembered everyone’s coffee order and would sit with us in the evening, smoking cigarettes and talking about how the town had changed since she was young. The fisherman in Antibes who taught me three words in Provençal and laughed when I mispronounced them. The way locals would retreat to their shuttered houses during the hottest part of the day, emerging again when the sun started to sink.
I wonder sometimes if I really experienced it or if I just skimmed the surface, another tourist with a camera and limited time… The French Riviera holds onto its secrets, I think, even as it opens its arms to millions of visitors. There’s something underneath all that sparkle and glamour, something older and more real, but I’m not sure I stayed long enough to find it. Maybe that’s the point - maybe it’s meant to leave you wanting more, dreaming about going back someday when you have more time, more money, more French vocabulary.
The train pulled away from Nice station on my last day, and I pressed my face to the window like a kid, watching the coastline disappear, already planning my return to a place that felt like a beautiful question I’d never quite learned how to ask.